


bewitched, body and soul

by kbots



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, F/M, Farmhand Link, Fluff, King Rhoam is a wealthy businessman, Past Character Death, Pride and prejudice au kind of, Rhoam is a bad father, Slow Burn, Zelda is oblivious, Zelda just wants to be a scholar but Rhoam wants her to be a proper lady, long fic alert, mild violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28401294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbots/pseuds/kbots
Summary: “If I were to be a princess, then I suppose you would be my knight,” Zelda said thoughtfully. “And knights never talk back to their princesses. It’s entirely improper.”Link smiled that crooked, boyish smile of his. “Well, excuse me, princess.”Zelda, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, wants to be the first female scholar of Castletown, but she needs to keep it a secret. After all, daughters stay in the house and obey their fathers; they don’t play scholar in the woods behind the manor just to write silly observations in journals that no one would ever see and threaten reputations.Link is the new, quiet farmhand her father hired, and he has a persistent habit of getting in Zelda’s way, and she’s beginning to get suspicious.
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Past Link/Saria
Comments: 38
Kudos: 142





	1. a swift and peculiar meeting of souls

**Author's Note:**

> This is a project I’ve been working on in my free time. I hope you enjoy! This story isn’t set in any specific time period, but I’ve been drawing most inspiration from the nineteenth century when women were expected to be very obedient to their fathers, and their role was in the home (not as a scholar). Their manor is in a town called Castletown; I used the name, but the towns probably don’t look the same. I drew most of the personalities/character traits from Breath of the Wild, especially Zelda’s initial hatred for Link. 
> 
> A note about the household: Rhoam is the master of the house. His wife, Zelda’s mother, has died. Their servants, Robbie, Impa, Purah, and Paya, are all related somehow, and come from the same family (the Sheikahs). I know Paya wasn’t technically around when the other three were young, but I’ve added her as a younger maid-in-training.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her father returns from a business trip, bringing an unexpected surprise.

He was an unexpected surprise. She hesitated to even call him a surprise, for surprises typically had positive connotations, and made one feel happy, and his presence did anything but. No, he annoyed her, infuriated her, puzzled and confounded her. At least, he did in the beginning. It took a little time for that to change, but once it did, there wasn’t any stopping what happened next.

X

_Journal Entry #137_

_Father’s expected to be home today. I know I should be happy to see him, but I will miss having the house to myself. When Father is home, I must return to my “womanly duties”, but if I stab myself in the finger while trying to embroider some silly pattern onto a dull patch of fabric I do believe I shall lose my mind. At least let me embroider something marvelous and exciting! Perhaps that lovely flower I saw in the marsh yesterday. I cannot wait to explore further and find it again; I have never seen anything quite like it. It looked like a lily, with lovely blue and white petals. I should like to try and capture it in threads, or paints, but I fear Father will notice and my exploits will be uncovered at last. At least the servants have kept quiet about my routine. I still feel awful for exploding at dear Paya last week. She’s still in training, after all! How could she ever have kn-_

_Skrrtch_. The pen scratched roughly against the paper, the flow of ink sputtering to a stop. Zelda sighed, setting down the pen. The inkwell must be running dry again; she would have to ask her father for a new one. He was so kind to bring her a pen, a _real_ pen, but the ink ran out so quickly! She supposed she always had her bag of pencils and charcoals, but there was something so pleasant about writing with ink. So very _scholarly_.

The sun’s rays shone soft and warm through the window, bathing her little desk in sunlight. Zelda pulled at the curtains, trying to open them a little more to get as much sun in her dreary room as possible. If anything, it would help dry out her journal. She hated it when the ink smudged.

Zelda stood, stretching her arms high above her head. Her hair tickled her neck; she needed to put it back into braids before her father returned. Maybe she would enlist Impa to help...it was such a long and tedious chore. Not for the first time, she wondered what he would do if she just chopped it all off with a knife stolen from the kitchen.

“What do you think, Terrako?” She asked, turning to face her bed. “If I had shorter hair, you’d have less of it to eat.”

The cat in question, or, rather, the lump of white fur on her bed, gave no response.

“I know you can hear me,” Zelda chided. Her bare feet slid across the wood floor; she should be wearing shoes, or at the very least, stockings, but shoes were so restrictive, and her father wasn’t here to be upset with her, anyway. She fell backwards onto her unmade bed with a soft thwump, nearly sending her embroidery (and Terrako) clattering to the floor.

She glared at the embroidery hoop before tossing it aside. It was a simple design that would take her only an hour or so to finish, but it was so dreadfully boring that she couldn’t help but avoid it. She decided she would finish it once her father had returned, and she had to act as if she actually enjoyed embroidering. Then, before Impa left for her weekly trip to town to purchase supplies, she would slip her the finished product to sell.

It was a routine they had been doing ever since Zelda decided to become the First Female Scholar of Castletown: Zelda would embroider during the week, as her father expected, and Impa would sell her work in town to, well, Zelda didn’t quite know. But Impa always returned with a small bag of coins for Zelda to hide under her mattress.

Zelda wished she could sell her embroidery herself. She wished she could go to town at all, but her father disproved of her going unaccompanied, and apparently Impa, Purah, and Robbie didn’t count as accompaniment. He claimed it was all very unladylike. Eighteen years of living in Castletown and she hadn’t even been to the town proper. She wondered if the whole town thought her a shut-in.

“I might as well be,” Zelda mumbled. “Stuck inside, learning how to be a proper lady. It’s all so boring!”

With a groan, she flopped over onto her stomach, burying her face into her pillows. In all of her books, the daughter of a rich man had plenty of excitement in her life: balls, suitors, fancy dresses and pearls and servants waiting on her hand and foot. Zelda supposed she did have servants, but she couldn’t imagine Impa or Purah putting up with her if she ever became particularly snobbish. Paya might, but she was still a servant-in-training. And she’d never met another man besides the ones that lived in the manor. Her father forbade it.

Zelda sighed again, scratching Terrako behind an ear. He opened his one blue eye to acknowledge her, purring lazily, his little brown feet kneading at her quilt.

There was a soft knock at her closed bedroom door, and Zelda had to strain her ears to hear Paya’s quiet voice on the other side. “Miss Zelda?”

Zelda sat up, quickly flattening her skirts and her hair, still unbraided. “Come in, Paya.”

Paya nervously opened the door and crept inside the room on silent feet. _All of the servants walk so quietly_ , Zelda thought. They all came from the same family - the Sheikahs - perhaps it was genetic?

“Master Bosphoramus has returned from his trip, miss. He requests your presence in the parlor,” Paya whispered.

Though Paya had worked as a servant-in-training with Zelda’s family for quite some time now, she still remained as nervous as she was on her first day. She was younger than Impa and Purah, only fourteen to their nineteen, but she had been with the household for over a year. Yet she still stammered and wrung her hands about and fiddled with her apron, though she had stopped dropping as many dishes.

Today, however, she seemed especially flustered, her cheeks flushed and hands brushing at her pale hair where it sat knotted at the nape of her neck.

Zelda noticed all this immediately. She had excellent observational skills, after all. What else is to be expected of a proper scholar?

“Are you quite alright, Paya?” Zelda asked.

Paya jumped, as if she forgot Zelda was there at all. “O-oh, yes, Miss Zelda. Perfectly alright. Your father is requesting your presence. Did I say that already?”

“You certainly did,” Zelda said with a laugh. She got to her feet, scrounging about for some stockings. “Is it something urgent?”

“I...gather it is of some importance, miss.”

Zelda quirked a brow. Her curiosity piqued, she tugged more urgently at her stockings. “I do hope it’s a surprise.”

Paya said nothing.

“Has he told you how long he will be back for?”

“He only told me to fetch you, Miss Zelda. He said nothing else.”

_Typical_ , Zelda thought. Her father had a habit of coming and going without bothering to tell anyone. “I suppose I will ask him when I see him.”

Paya rocked on her heels. “Are you planning to go out again sometime soon, miss?”

“Not if he’s here.” Zelda stood, stockings firmly secured on her feet. “That’s why I need to know when he’s leaving again.”

Zelda thanked Paya as she darted past her into the hall, counting each creaking step she took down the stairs. Whatever could her father want her for? Typically he bellowed a greeting up the stairs when he returned, and disappeared into his study to plan his next trip. He had never called for her before. Perhaps he brought her a new journal, or pen. Or he simply wanted to speak to her, like fathers and daughters do.

The thought brought a smile to Zelda’s face, and she bounded down the steps a little faster.

Impa, in all her understated beauty, stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Zelda had always been envious of Impa’s (and, for that matter, her twin sister Purah’s) looks. She had flawless skin, lovely eyes like melted chocolate and the same silky, flowing hair that every Sheikah seemed to have. She moved with a kind of ladylike grace that Zelda wouldn’t even try to capture herself, and had a laugh like the music of wind chimes.

It was hard to believe Impa was only a year older than her. If anything, _she_ should be the lady, and Zelda, with her common blonde hair, the housemaid.

“Hello, Impa!” Zelda said brightly. “Have you finished with the day’s chores?”

“Not yet, Miss Zelda,” Impa replied. “I’ve been waiting for you to make an appearance so I can make sure you look like the lady your father is expecting.” She glanced over Zelda’s simple white gown and stockinged feet, clucking her tongue. “And it was good I did so. Your skirts are wrinkled, and where are your shoes?”

“I don’t like them. They pinch my toes.” Zelda brushed at her skirts half-heartedly. “You’re taking quite the tone with me, you know, I ought to have you fired.”

“My apologies, Miss Zelda,” Impa said drily. “Do be sure to tell Master Bosphoramus of my grievances. I’m sure you’ll be rid of me in the morning.”

Zelda faked a dramatic gasp. “But then who shall make sure the cook bakes fruitcake on the weekends? I shall die without it.”

Impa laughed her sparkling laugh, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t keep your father waiting. You know how impatient he is.”

“Oh, I know.” Zelda rolled her eyes, crossing the entryway to the closed parlor doors. They stood tall and dark before her, and she found herself hesitating before knocking, anxiety brewing deep in her stomach. She traced the grain of the wood with her eyes before turning back to Impa, who was watching her expectantly. “How do I look? Proper?”

“Perfectly ladylike, Miss Zelda, despite the mud on your hem.”

With a real gasp this time, Zelda gathered up her skirts, trying to find the offending hem, but Impa’s teasing laughter made her face flush with embarrassment when she realized there was no mud at all. “Don’t tease me like that, Impa! You know how strict Father is.” She said the words harshly, but she didn’t mean them.

“You best not let him sit in there for much longer, then,” Impa said lightly. She knew her little tease broke through Zelda’s cloud of worry and eased her mind away from frightening what-ifs, if only a little.

Zelda glanced back at the parlor doors, worried at her lip. “Do you know what he wants me for? Has he found out?”

“If he has, I haven’t heard of it. And we certainly haven’t told him. I am unsure why he has called you, but I doubt it is anything horrible. I didn’t see him when he entered, but if he was upset with you, he would be making much more of a fuss instead of sending Paya to fetch you.”

Impa crossed over to Zelda as she spoke, reaching up to adjust the simple braids atop Zelda’s head, tucking a few stray hairs behind her ears. Then, in a softer, quieter voice, she added: “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Thank you, Impa.” Zelda squeezed her hand slightly before turning to face the doors again, and, screwing up her courage, knocked. “Father? You called for me?”

Gods, is this how Paya felt all the time before entering a room?

Zelda heard her father’s rumbling voice address someone - perhaps the cook? - before calling her in.

Her father sat in the large armchair by the fireplace, the day’s paper held open in his lap. He was a large, intimidating man, with neat white hair tied back from his face and a long, well-kept beard. His eyebrows were thick and weighed heavily on his stern green eyes, giving the impression that he was always cross (and with Zelda, he frequently was). His typical traveling cloak, a fine piece of heavy black and blue fabric embellished in gold, hung on the coat stand near the door, a definite sign that he was home for at least a week.

And standing before him was a complete and utter stranger, and Zelda was immediately distracted.

“Zelda, finally,” her father said, barely glancing up at her. “When I call you, I expect you to be here quickly.”

“Yes, Father. I will try to be quicker next time.”

At that, he did look up at her. “You _will_ be quicker next time. A lady comes when she is called.”

Zelda resisted the urge to roll her eyes, scream, slap her father, run out the room; she hardly knew herself. “Yes, Father,” she said, forcing her voice to sound polite and obedient.

The stranger remained silent during this entire exchange, his eyes flitting back and forth between Zelda and her father as if he was watching a riveting game of cricket. Zelda forced herself to look at her father instead of him; the second she diverted her attention her father would surely tell her off for staring, being impolite, disrespecting her father, or something else equally trivial.

Her father stroked absently at his great snowy beard as he continued, gesturing vaguely to the stranger. “This is Link. He will be our new farmhand.”

The stranger - Link - turned to face her fully. She barely caught a glimpse of his face before he bowed, quickly and neatly. When he straightened, she couldn’t help but notice, firstly, that he was _short_.

Shorter than _her_!

By _several inches_!

And then, his eyes; they were a brilliant blue, like the petals of that strange, beautifulflower she saw in the marsh. He didn’t meet her stare, not directly, instead opting respectfully to look at her forehead, but Zelda felt better off because of it. When he had come out of his bow, his eyes had met hers, for just a brief, brief moment, and the intensity of his gaze had startled her so much she almost forgot to curtsy.

His long hair was tied back into a golden-blond ponytail, a messy one, strands falling out to frame his sharp jaw. He stood ram-rod straight, with his hands clasped firmly behind his back, and there was a kind of tenseness in his shoulders and his legs, like he was ready to jump into action at any second. He reminded Zelda, briefly, of a tightly coiled spring.

He wore a long-sleeved, cream-colored shirt with simple green embroidery around the neckline, and plain trousers tucked into a pair of heavy brown boots. A rucksack hung off one broad shoulder, but it looked like hardly anything was in it. His eyebrow twitched slightly under her scrutiny - she was merely observing him, he didn’t need to be so twitchy - but he gave no sign that he had anything to say to her at all.

_What kind of a name is Link?_ Zelda wondered. She drew a little bit nearer, stepping to the middle of the room.

Link seemed to tense even more as she got closer, his shoulders stiffening. He looked ready to run out the open window.

“Pleased to meet you, Link,” Zelda said politely. “I am Zelda. Zelda Bosphoramus.”

Link’s blue, blue eyes flitted to meet hers briefly before he averted his gaze. He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement, but said nothing.

“I...certainly hope you enjoy your employment here at the manor. Are you fond of animals?”

He blinked, looking mildly surprised by the question. After a beat, he nodded.

Zelda smiled awkwardly, unsure how to carry on the conversation if he refused to speak. Or, perhaps, couldn’t speak. “Where do you-“

“Please do your best not to frighten him off,” her father interrupted in his cold, deep voice. “Impa, fetch Robbie to come and show the boy around, and send Purah or Paya to make up a bed for him in the servant’s quarters.”

“Yes, sir,” Impa replied from her position by the door. She disappeared on silent feet, leaving an uncomfortable silence in her wake.

A thousand questions had settled on the tip of Zelda’s tongue. _Who is he? Where did you find him? Why does he have nothing with him, if he is to live here? How old is he? Why doesn’t he speak? Is he mute? Or simply shy? If he finds out my secret, will he tell you?_ She forced them all back behind her teeth. Proper ladies didn’t ask questions. At least, according to her father.

Zelda glanced at Link again. He had adjusted his posture so he wasn’t looking at either her or her father, instead, out the window. He had a steely, determined look in his eye. Was he someone she could trust? She only told the other servants because she truly trusted them to keep her secret. They were her friends, and they supported her, however crazy her ambitions might be. But would Link? If her father found out about her scholarly pursuits, or worse, if someone from town found out...

She’d be a disgrace to the Bosphoramus name.

She nervously patted at her skirts. It hadn’t been more than a minute or two, but the silence was killing her. It certainly didn’t seem to bother Link or her father. If only Impa would hurry with Robbie. Not for the first time, Zelda wished she could hear their footsteps, but they were all so quiet!

“Zelda,” her father said suddenly, and she snapped to attention. “You’re fidgeting.”

Zelda glanced down at her hands. “O-oh. Sorry, Father.”

Link, of course, said nothing. His habit of doing so was becoming increasingly apparent to Zelda.

They stood there for what felt like hours to Zelda, and with each passing moment she became increasingly aware of her own imperfect appearance: her lack of shoes, her unbraided hair, her wrinkled skirts and her awkwardness. She was certain her father could see every one of these imperfections.

He was probably filing them away to tell her off later: A proper lady always wears shoes. A proper lady has neat hair, and holds her head high. A proper lady doesn’t allow cat hair on her clothes. A proper lady isn’t suspicious of the new farmhand, because there’s nothing to be suspicious about, Zelda, you’re being absolutely foolish. 

Stewing in her thoughts, she barely noticed how Link glanced at the door a second before Robbie made his grand entrance.

“Hel _looooo_ , Master B!” Robbie’s voice echoed through the room as the man himself appeared in the doorway, his footsteps silent as a ghost.

_Did Link truly_ hear _him coming?_ Zelda thought incredulously, but her mind instantly calmed at the sight of such a friendly face. Robbie must’ve been in the gardens, for his neat blue trousers and his boots were coated with soil. He adjusted his huge round glasses and ran a dirty hand through his wild hair as he entered the parlor.

Robbie was a curious man. He overtook most of the duties of the household; he was part butler, part valet, part footman, and part occasional gardener and tinkerer. He, too, was from the Sheikah family, somehow related to Impa and Purah, though it was unclear how. In any case, he had the same distinct hair color they did. He also had the largest, most brazen personality of anyone Zelda knew. It was a wonder her stern father put up with him. He could barely put up with her.

Robbie gave a snappy bow as he addressed Zelda’s father in his cool, slow voice. “Just _delighted_ to see you back with us, sir. The little lady behaved perfectly in your absence, don’t worry. The very picture of elegance and grace, sir, as always.” He winked at Zelda with a wide, sparkling grin. “Who’s this strapping young lad, hm?”

“His name is Link,” Zelda’s father said, clearly not pleased at having to explain this twice. “He will be our new farmhand. I expect you to show him around and instruct him on his daily tasks. Afterward you will show him to the servant’s quarters.”

“Hm, hm, I see! Pleased to meet you, lad!” Robbie crowed, grabbing one of Link’s hands from behind his back and giving it a vigorous shake. “You’re simply going to love it here at the manor. Hm, yes, I can feel it. Shall we be off then, sir? We can stop at the stables first, hm?”

Link, for his credit, didn’t seem fazed by Robbie’s presence, or volume, for that matter. His eyes widened just briefly in what Zelda thought might’ve been surprise when Robbie nearly amputated his hand, but his blank expression gave nothing else away. Zelda was sure he was about to be subject to a very long tour of the manor, with plenty of unnecessary information about Robbie’s wife and son (and his horse, Cherry) included.

“Yes, yes, be off,” Zelda’s father waved a hand. “Oh, I expect a full report of anything that has happened in my absence, Robbie. I shall meet you in my study after dinner.”

“As always, sir,” Robbie said brightly. He bowed again, full of pomp, before practically dragging Link out of the parlor. Zelda almost felt bad for him, but then the parlors doors slammed shut, and she realized she was completely alone with her father.

She turned to face him. He had his cheek propped in one large hand as he read, the paper resting on his knee. Surely the _Castletown Inquirer_ couldn’t be _that_ interesting. Did he expect her to start conversation? Was he waiting for her? What if this was all a test to see if she was ready to enter society, and she had failed because she wasn’t wearing shoes?

Gods, he would never let her go into town.

“It...is nice. To have you back, I mean. Father.” Zelda said, hesitant, awkward, clunky. Was a daughter supposed to be so nervous when talking to her own father?

He hummed. “It is nice to be back. I have plenty of business to conduct in Castletown while I am here.” He turned a page. “I hope to get it all done before I leave.”

“Oh.” Though she wanted her father to go, there was a small part of her that desperately wanted him to stay. Wanted him to _want_ to stay. For her. She can’t remember the last time they ate dinner together; she always ate alone, in her room. If he stayed longer, would that change? “Are you leaving soon, then?”

He replied disinterestedly. “Yes. Soon. There is land in one of the further towns I’ve been contracted to take a look at to determine its worth.”

“Which town?”

Her father stopped reading. Looked up at her with stern eyes. “I would assume you have duties to fulfill, Zelda. There are many improvements to make with your character. I would suggest you work on them.” He dropped his gaze back to his paper, and if he noticed the way Zelda flinched, he didn’t acknowledge it. “You are dismissed.”

When Zelda turned and left the parlor, she couldn’t help but wonder if he noticed her leave at all.

Impa stood outside the door, her expression sympathetic, arms welcoming. It was not the first time Zelda had collapsed into her embrace, Impa stroking her back and whispering soothing words into her hair as Zelda shook at the words of her father, wondering why she couldn’t be enough for him. The worst part of it all wasn’t that Zelda knew it wouldn’t be the last time. No, it was the fact that her _father_ knew, and it hardly affected him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. This is gonna be a long one, friends, so I hope you’re in for the long haul.   
> If you enjoyed, leave a kudos or a comment! I love hearing feedback :)


	2. i have not the pleasure of understanding you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A solemn departure, a bit of connection, and a mild confrontation.

_July 22nd_

_The new farmhand, Link, has proven to be quite the curiosity. Twice now I’ve seen his talking to the horses (though both times I was too far away to actually hear him), and yet he’s never spoken to me! Not once! Originally, I thought he may be mute, or shy, but upon pressing the issue to Father he assured me (with some annoyance) that Link did indeed have a voice. I decided the latter is also unlikely, for I’ve been observing him in detail over the five days since his arrival, and whenever Purah and Robbie engage him in conversation he doesn’t express any of the typical signs of shyness, such as sweating, avoiding eye contact, or hesitation. He typically seems interested, though he rarely responds by way of speech or facial expression. I have to admit, he’s making my time trapped in the manor a little more bearable. Trying to understand him takes up most of my time, and the rest is taken up with the pianoforte lessons Father has suddenly thrust upon me._

_I have a silly confession to make. I fear I have been rather paranoid lately; for the last five days, it truly feels as if Link has been following me. He might just be doing his duties, but whenever I round a corner, he’s there, as if by magic. I have no real proof as of yet, which makes me feel as if it’s all inside my head, but I should set up an experiment all the same. After all, how many times can our paths cross during the day and have it still be coincidence? Today alone, he exited the kitchen at the exact moment I descended the stairs. It was timed so perfectly that I nearly ran him over. I realize that such an encounter hardly sounds strange, especially around breakfast, but Impa has informed me that he eats all his meals outside, and he wasn’t carrying any food. Perhaps he was merely returning a dish...but these types of encounters have happened so often lately that I hardly think it chance we keep running into each other. He’s been here five days. Originally I chalked it up to confusion on where to go, but surely he should have the layout of the manor’s ground floor memorized already. And why is he inside so often, bumping into me, if he’s supposed to be tending to the animals outside? It’s so irritating! I need to keep observing him._

It took a week after Link’s arrival for her father to leave on another trip, and he implied it would be a long one. A month, at the very least; he had a long way to travel, and he didn’t seem like he was in a hurry to return, anyway. He had left early that morning, Zelda bidding him farewell before he left for his waiting carriage. She had asked when he would return. He told her he didn’t know, and perhaps he would send her a letter.

“It’s frustrating, Purah,” Zelda sighed. She sat on the manor steps, watching the wind stir up dust at her feet as Purah swept the porch behind her. She had been there for a while; she had watched her father’s carriage get smaller and smaller on the horizon until it turned into a mere speck, and then vanished entirely. She hadn’t bothered to move after it had gone. “He’s so obsessed with being proper, but isn’t it improper to leave an unmarried woman alone for an entire month?”

Purah shrugged. She looked practically identical to her twin sister Impa, except she had shorter hair that she wore in a bun atop her head, her bangs falling messily in front of her face. “I don’t know what to tell you, Miss Zelda. You’re always in a better state of mind when he isn’t around, so I think it best to not stew on the way he makes you feel, and instead think of all the scientific observation you’ll do in his absence.”

Zelda dropped her chin in her hands, propping her elbow on her knees. A decidedly unladylike pose, but no one was around to see, anyway. “Do you think the town knows I exist?”

She heard Purah stop sweeping. “I suppose I don’t know, Miss Zelda. I have never heard anyone in town speak of you, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t aware of you.”

“Maybe they do know of me. If they do, I’m sure they wonder why I’ve never been to town. They must think I’m strange, and unfit to be in society. Rhoam Bosphoramus’s peculiar daughter.” Zelda frowned. “No wonder Father leaves on business trips so often. He’s just trying to get away from me.”

The rough bristles of Purah’s broom hit the side of her face with a _thwap_ and a cloud of dust. It didn’t hurt, of course, but the surprise of it made Zelda yelp. “Purah! What was that for?”

Purah retracted the broom, leaning on the handle with a hip popped, hand firmly on her waist. “You were practically pouting, Zeldy,” she said, dropping her servant’s manners. “You never work well when you’re like this.”

“And what do you expect me to do?” Zelda asked haughtily, patting the dust from her hair.

Purah shrugged. “Stop it. Go and chase a deer around, or whatever you actually do out there. Just quit sulking on the steps; it won’t do you any good.”

Zelda dropped her hands to her lap, looking past the manor to the trees lining the road. She knew Purah was right. She did want to explore, _desperately_. She wanted to know if more of those blue and white flowers grew in the wilds of the marsh. She wanted to catch a frog and get mud all over her hands and her gown, and then eat dinner with Impa by candlelight in her bedroom as she gushed over her observations. She wanted to wake up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the pond before the dragonflies woke up, so she could sketch the stained-glass patterns of their wings without them darting away, then spend the rest of the morning drinking tea with her feet in the cool water.

Purah tapped her on the forehead. “Are you quite done daydreaming? I have to sweep these steps.”

“Oh! Sorry, Purah.” Zelda jumped to her feet, brushing dust off her skirts. Purah was definitely more brash than any of the other servants dared to be with Zelda, after all, she was still the daughter of their employer. But Zelda didn’t mind at all. Purah’s boldness made her feel like less of a servant and more of a friend, and Zelda didn’t have many of those. So, secretly, she liked it when Purah dropped the formalities, though she feared one day she would slip in front of Zelda’s father and lose her job.

Purah smiled; it was just as lovely as Impa’s, but in a different way. “Have an excellent day, Miss Zelda. Do let me know if you catch a deer.”

Zelda giggled. “Once Impa returns, I’ll go and try my best.”

Impa had left for town a short while after her father to buy the week’s food, and she should be back soon. She had taken Zelda’s embroidery with her to sell, along with the pouch of her hidden money to buy a new journal with. Zelda had filled up her last one yesterday with a whimsical little sketch of a woman on the back of a thick-billed bird under her last entry. It wasn’t the most scientific drawing in her journal, but with her father around there wasn’t much observing she could do that she hadn’t already done. In any case, she had to wait until Impa returned with a new journal. She already had plans to capture the blue and white flower perfectly with her paints. Perhaps she could pick one, and press it between the pages?

Zelda wandered off along the dirt path that led to a little barn and coop off to the side of the manor. The chickens roamed free outside their coop, searching for insects in the dirt. A fenced-in area held the larger livestock. Zelda leaned on the fence, softly clicking her tongue to call the new calf her father had bought a few months ago. He had allowed Zelda to name her despite his belief that animals didn’t need names.

“Hello, Romani,” Zelda said gently, as the calf bounded up to the fence. She was small and sweet and lovely, with a soft auburn pelt and big, round eyes hidden by long lashes. Zelda scratched under her chin, smiling when Romani snuffled at her palm, searching for food.

Zelda was so caught up with Romani that she almost didn’t notice the chicken. The screeching, however, was hard to miss.

The chicken was racing across the lawn toward the road a few yards from Zelda, wings flapping and feathers flying, practically screaming at the top of her little chicken lungs. Zelda immediately recognized the bird by the tuft of red feathers on her forehead; her named was Anju, and she was one of her mother’s favorite hens. A sad smile tugged at Zelda’s mouth. Her mother loved those chickens. She gave them affectionate names, for she believed every creature had a distinct personality and therefore deserved one. She always insisted on feeding the chickens herself, with the excuse that “the farmhands simply don’t know how to treat them right”. A picture of her mother flashed in her mind; hair like spun gold and kind, gentle eyes. Her soft smile, her soothing voice.

Anju shrieked again, and Zelda looked up from her memories to see Link practically _throwing_ himself across the lawn with outstretched arms, just barely catching the screaming chicken as she made one final attempt at escape. Dust billowed in huge clouds around him and Anju as he skidded to a stop, his hands firmly in place around Anju’s ruffled feathers. He carefully pulled her to his chest as he stood securing her there with an arm. White feathers stuck out of his hair and a generous coating of dust covered his shirt and trousers. Anju didn’t seem pleased; she continued to struggle and peck at his hands, but, astonishingly, Link didn’t drop her, or even flinch. He made quiet shushing sounds that Zelda could just barely hear, smoothing Anju’s feathers with his free hand.

Link started back toward the coop and froze, spotting Zelda by the fence. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but Zelda noticed (of course). Anju pecked ceaselessly at his fingers, but he didn’t let her go.

“Hello.” Zelda said, forcing pleasantry. She was painfully aware of her own suspicions against him and couldn’t help but feel on edge, but a proper lady always made conversation. No matter how irritated and fed up and confused she was.

Link said nothing, simply bowing in lieu of a greeting, patting Anju when she made an angry sound at his movement.

“Is Anju giving you trouble?”

If Zelda hadn’t been focused on his face so intently, she might’ve missed the subtle way his eyebrows furrowed when she spoke, glancing down at the chicken in his arms. He looked back up at her. Clearly no one informed him that the farm animals had names.

Zelda refused to feel amused. No, she was annoyed with him. For following her everywhere. “The chicken you’re holding. Her name is Anju. You can tell which one she is by the feathers on her crown; none of the other chickens have such a characteristic.”

He blinked, then nodded. Anju squirmed. Then, to Zelda’s surprise, Link looked at Romani (who was trying to eat Zelda’s skirt through the fence) with an almost _questioning_ expression. Perhaps he wasn’t so straight-faced as she previously thought? But his expressions were still so subtle; if she hadn’t been watching she hardly would’ve noticed. _I wish Impa was back with my journal..._ she thought sourly. She hated having such fascinating thoughts in her head without being able to write them down.

Link looked at her, and then back at Romani. After a beat, Zeldarealized, in his own way, he was asking about the calf’s name.

“Oh! My apologizes.” _Maybe if you had spoken it wouldn’t have taken so long._ “This is Romani.” Zelda gave the calf’s head a little scratch. “She’s new here, but our other cow, Cremia, has been nothing but kind to her. I was worried at first, but they’re getting along so smoothly one would think they were sisters.”

Link nodded, watching the way Romani thrived under Zelda’s ministrations. Anju had calmed down for the most part, though she looked rather sullen about her failed escape attempt.

An awkward silence fell between them. A hundred thoughts ran through Zelda’s brain; should she tell him now about where she was going to go today? That she was playing scholar in the woods behind the house against the will of her father, threatening his reputation as well as her own, just to write silly observations in journals that no one would ever see? No. She didn’t have to tell him. He was just a farmhand, albeit a painfully annoying one. He had no right to know of her routine, and absolutely no right to be _following her around_! If she was braver, she would tell him off right there, and force him to come clean.

Zelda tried to formulate a subtle question to answer one of her doubts. “Are you...finding everything alright? I know you’ve been here for a little under a week, and the manor can be a little...confusing to strangers.”

Confirming her suspicions that Link definitely _hadn’t_ been lost all those times he ran into her, he nodded affirmatively.

Zelda narrowed her eyes. Then was he truly following her around? For what reason? He was a _farmhand_ , and a complete, very male stranger. Her father wouldn’t have hired a stalker...would he?

“Well, then. I suppose I better let you get back to work,” Zelda said, plastering a fake smile on her face. “It’s a lovely day, after all.”

Again, Link said nothing. He bowed and strode away to return Anju to the chicken coop, his back to her.

Zelda turned to Romani, squishing her soft little cheeks. “Is he confusing to you, too?”

Romani nuzzled into her touch, but, predictably, did not reply, as she was a cow.

“Now I must wait for Impa. I fear I might die of impatience before she arrives.”

Blessedly, Zelda was saved from death as Impa’s form appeared on the dusty horizon in a matter of minutes, carrying her basket full of groceries. And, hopefully, a journal. Zelda couldn’t wait; she raced down the dirt road to meet Impa halfway.

“Impa!”

“Hello, Miss Zelda.”

“Have you...” Zelda trailed off, trying to curb her mounting excitement. She turned, checking to see if Link was watching, but he wasn’t looking at them at all. He was standing by the coop, glaring down at the chickens with his hands firmly on his hips. Why did it matter to her if he knew, anyway?

_Because he might tell Father._

“Have you found a journal for me?” Zelda asked.

Impa laughed, amused. “I wouldn’t return if I hadn’t, Miss Zelda.” She rummaged in her basket of groceries before pulling out a beautiful, camel-brown book, complete with a tie across the front to hold it shut and a lovely emblem stamped on the cover. Zelda gasped.

“I found a nice thick one bound in leather for you,” Impa said, handing it over.

Zelda marveled at it in her hands, the leather soft against her skin. She untied it, running the pages through her fingers, imagining what wonderful things she could fill them with. “Oh, Impa, it’s perfect. You’re incredible! Wherever did you find it?”

“It’s clear you’ve never been to the town market, Miss Zelda,” Impa smiled. “I’ll have to sneak you there sometime. You might die of excitement from all the things you can purchase. Oh!” She pulled a pouch from her basket. “Your leftover money. I managed to haggle the merchant down quite a bit, so you still have some coins left.”

Zelda couldn’t help it; she lunged forward to wrap Impa in a hug, and she didn’t care who saw it. If she wanted to give her best friend a hug, she _would_ , societal standards be damned!

“I don’t know what I would without you,” Zelda whispered. She felt, rather than heard, Impa laughing as she hugged Zelda back.

“Well, for starters, Miss Zelda, you’d certainly be out of a journal.”

Zelda giggled. “I’d have to write on my fabric samples instead. Oh, Father would not be pleased!”

They both laughed, two friends on a dusty road in the middle of summer.

“Well!” Impa exclaimed. “I need to deliver this to the kitchen, and you need to change into proper scholar’s attire, Miss Zelda,” She patted Zelda’s cheek. “I expect to see you covered in dirt by the end of the day.”

They fell in step with each other, walking to the manor together. Somehow, the hem of Impa’s simple black dress remained perfectly dust free. Zelda looked at her own gown, the hem of which was almost completely brown. Perhaps she should lift her skirts more when she walked?

“You sound like Purah. You know, she hit me with a broom today.”

Impa smirked. “I’m sure you deserved it, Miss Zelda.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “Of course you’d take her side. Don’t you want to know _why_ she hit me with a broom?”

“Were you sulking on the steps again?”

“I do not _sulk_!” Zelda exclaimed. She folded her arms childishly across her chest. “I was merely _thinking_. Not sulking. Ladies do not sulk.”

“Ladies don’t, but you sure do.”

“ _Purah_!”

They reached the manor steps, Impa greeting her broom-wielding sister on the porch. Zelda took her leave of the two, bounding up the stairs to her bedroom to change and gather her supplies. She had a special basket she used for her scholarly pursuits to carry her things. She kept everything she needed in the bottom drawer of her desk: her bag of pencils and brushes, a box of paints, a magnifying glass and a small knife she stole from her father, spare hair pins in case her braids got untidy, her fountain pen and a bottle of ink.

She tucked all of these away in her basket, along with her brand new, perfect journal. Excitement rose inside her chest, burning like a wildfire. A whole _month_ all to herself. She changed into her most practical outfit quick as lightning; a plain blue, long-sleeved dress that cinched at her waist and had lovely gold and green buttons along the front.

Zelda swung down the stairs and into the kitchen. She loved the kitchen; it always smelled magical, like spices and herbs and freshly baked bread. Today, the windows were wide open, letting in warm, golden sunlight and the scent of flowers on the breeze.

Stamm, the cook, beamed at her as she entered. He was a tall, slender man, with heavy eyebrows and rosy cheeks. He knelt in front of the big brick fireplace, stirring chopped onions and mushrooms in a pan where it sat on the iron grate, between a pots of simmering broth and just-boiling water. Once or twice, Zelda’s father had offered to upgrade the fireplace to one of those new, wood-burning cookstoves, but Stamm had turned it down, claiming that he needed nothing more than fire and a pan to make an amazing dish.

He was usually right on that.

“Hello, Miss Zelda!” Stamm said brightly. “How do you feel about beef and mushroom risotto for supper?”

“Well, it smells excellent, Stamm,” Zelda replied. “And everything you make is bound to be delicious.”

Stamm smiled even wider. “You’re much too kind, miss.” He checked the pot of water, and looked over to the table where Moza, his assistant, was cutting meat into haphazard chunks. “Moza, could you bring over the rice?”

Moza jumped to her feet to fetch the rice from the pantry. Moza wanted to be a cook herself, and had worked under Stamm for a few months now. She had the ambition, Zelda noted, but certainly not the skill. Any food Moza made on her own was dubious at best, but Zelda always felt too bad to turn her dishes down. Even if said dishes made her slightly ill afterward.

The ever kindly Stamm always made sure Zelda had plenty of fruitcake as a reward for appeasing Moza, though, so it could be worse.

“Are you heading out on an adventure?” Stamm inquired, as he poured rice into the boiling water. At Zelda’s confirmation, he beckoned to the pantry. “Feel free to take anything you need, as always.”

Zelda smiled. She loved her household. “Thank you, Stamm. You’re the best.” She started sifting through the pantry, grabbing some fruit and bread. There was a little fruitcake leftover, so she wrapped it up in cloth and tucked the food away in her basket, beside her journal and bag of paints and pencils.

After thanking Stamm and Moza for their kindness, she hurried out the open door, stopping on the porch to bask in the sun as it hit her skin. It felt so good; she had been cooped inside for those five long days while her father had been back, with nothing to do but stare longingly out the window and pretend to enjoy embroidering.

She immediately took her flats off and put them in her basket, stepping onto the soft grass just to feel it on her bare feet. She felt the most free she had all week. The collar of her gowns was a little high on her neck, so she unbuttoned it due to the summer heat.

It wasn’t proper at all, but Zelda had never seen anyone else in the woods behind the manor, or the marsh, so she figured it wouldn’t cause a scandal.

Zelda breathed in deep, taking in the smell of grass and dirt, as well as the chickens and livestock nearby. The wind ruffled her skirts and the stray hairs around her face. She took a step forward, and heard the porch creak behind her.

She turned, and there _he_ was.

Link stood in the doorway, one foot in the kitchen and one on the porch, out of breath and staring at her with that infuriatingly blank expression on his face, sleeves rolled up and trousers dirty, a single white feather stuck in his bangs.

“Hello, Link,” Zelda said hesitantly, trying to keep the annoyance out of her tone.

He bowed slightly.

 _Stay polite, Zelda_. “...I hope you’ve been having a pleasant day?”

Link nodded, running a hand through his messy golden hair. He fully stepped onto the porch, quietly shutting the kitchen door behind him. Zelda gave him a quick once-over as he turned to close the door, inspecting his pockets for food to snack on, or an axe to chop firewood with, or anything that might hint as to why he would be behind the manor. He had no reason to be back here; there was nothing but the woods and the marsh. And her, she supposed. In his mind, she had no reason to be behind the manor, either.

_He’s following me again!_

With that thought, Zelda clutched her basket a little tighter as Link stood there, watching her almost expectantly with his blue, blue eyes. “Well...it was nice to see you again. I’m sure you have plenty of duties to do around the manor, so I will leave you be.” Without waiting to see his response (or lack thereof), she turned and started to head for the marsh yet again, trying to calm the irritation stewing in her mind.

The porch creaked, and she heard Link’s heavy boots land on the grass behind her. His footsteps followed soon after, surprisingly quiet.

She wondered if, when he took off his boots, he was as silent as the servants.

Zelda turned again. She was sick of this, and she didn’t care how harsh her tone was when she spoke. 

“Are you following me?” 

Link didn’t even skip a beat, or have the decency to look ashamed. He just nodded.

Though Zelda had been suspicious of it for some time, the revelation still affected her. “ _Why?”_ she breathed, but, of _course_ , Link didn’t respond. He looked at the ground, shifted his weight from foot to foot, but said nothing. 

_Why do you follow me around and then refuse to speak to me?_

”Well. I’m...going,” Zelda said awkwardly. She didn’t know what to do in this situation. There was no proper way to go about this kind of thing, at least, not one that she knew of. Did she ask him to stop? Threaten to get him fired? Make a scene until he was forced to speak? She tried to handle it as calmly and politely as possible, battling her rising temper. “I’m going to the marsh. And you need not follow me there, I assure you. So...return to the manor, and feed the chickens, or whatever it is that you do.” Zelda waved a hand vaguely toward the barn, aware of how rude and petty she sounded. “I’m not afraid to tell my father about this, either!” she added, just for good measure. And spite. 

Of course, Link’s expression didn’t change. Or, if it did, Zelda didn’t care enough to notice. Quiet fury boiled inside her, but she pursed her lips and spun on her heel, stomping toward the marsh with her father’s words ringing in her ears: _Proper ladies do not lose their temper._

He wasn’t worth losing her temper over. No, Zelda wouldn’t let this _boy_ bother her, much less distract her. She had a month to herself to explore and observe, and she absolutely would not let someone she had known for _five days_ stop her.

Link’s quiet footsteps rang like alarm bells, just three paces away, and Zelda groaned in frustration. She stopped in her tracks and so did he, and when she whirled around he almost looked guilty, or some irritatingly subtle imitation of guilty. The glare she gave him could cut through stone, one that made most of the other servants shake in their boots.

But Link didn’t waver, and Zelda couldn’t help but wonder if her words meant anything to him at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be the marsh!  
> Comment what you think and leave a kudos if you enjoyed it! 
> 
> I appreciate you all.
> 
> Note: I edited the end a little bit to fix a pacing issue.


	3. the problem with human beings is simply that we are human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We see the marsh. On one side angry words are spoken, on the other, none at all. A discussion is had between friends and a one-eyed cat deserves much more attention than he got, and Zelda finds herself entirely miserable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me so long to write. I had about 3,500 words written over the course of a week and a half, but a few days ago I realized I hated it. So I scrapped it and rewrote it entirely and I’m much more pleased with this version.

_July 23rd_

_I meant to go to the marsh yesterday, but I didn’t go through with it. I got to the tree line, but couldn’t pass it, not with him directly behind me in his big heavy boots, aiming to frighten every creature I come across! I can hardly have my first real experience in the marsh with him trailing behind. I was right all along: Link has been following me, and he intends to keep doing it. Though, I noticed something peculiar. He only starts to follow me when I attempt to leave the manor grounds. I tested this theory this morning and afternoon; I wandered all about the manor and he hardly showed his head, which was a welcome change of pace! I went outside, and as long as I was on the grounds (and in his sight) he stayed relatively away. But the second I made a move to leave the grounds he appeared out of thin air to once again become my silent shadow. I’ve told him to leave me alone several times, but he never listens! As inconvenient as it may be, it’s all the more confusing why he’s suddenly changed his behavior. Before, I was always running into him. But now he’s only following me when I attempt to leave? He’s terribly, awfully confusing, and I wish Father never hired him. I plan to make a sneaky escape tomorrow, however, and explore the marsh once and for all. I’ve enlisted Purah and everything, so it couldn’t possibly fail._

Her plan failed.

Zelda fumed silently, glaring at Link where he sat across from her. Everything had been going so well. She had timed it just right so she’d be leaving while he tended to the animals in the barn, far away enough and loud enough where even his excellent hearing couldn’t catch her. As a precaution, she had Purah go in and distract him, as she was the very best at being distracting. The kitchen door was already open due to the heat, Zelda had barely made a sound on the porch. She had ran with her shoes off all the way to the tree line, quick as a rabbit and entirely undetected. She had just passed the wild rosebushes when she saw him, perched in the apple tree and halfway through a freshly plucked fruit. He had swung down like some kind of primate, an irritating amusement in his eyes, and Zelda just barely restrained herself from throwing a shoe at his head.

“You know, it’s rude to follow a lady around,” she said coldly. They were sitting on the grass by the tree line, the beautiful, golden marsh hidden from sight. She had sat down promptly after being caught, as if it were her plan to relax by the trees the entire time. “And improper.”

Link glanced at her, arching an eyebrow. He had a little knife out, whittling deftly away at a piece of old firewood he had stashed away somewhere.

“Yes! _Terribly_ improper. But I suppose a farm boy like yourself would hardly know anything about propriety.” Zelda had meant the remark to be cutting, but it had no effect. As usual. She looked down at her lap, where her closed journal lay, full of empty pages begging for wonderful, scholarly observation. She supposed it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Are you still as intent on following me as you were yesterday, and the day before?”

To her irritation, Link simply looked at her, as if it was a silly, stupid question to ask since she already knew the answer to it.

“Yes, well. I suppose I could’ve guessed that.” She propped her chin on her hand, aware of how unladylike she was acting. But Link was hardly gentlemanly, so she really didn’t have to put on her best manners if he wasn’t going to.

They sat in silence for a while, the only sound the soft _skrtch-skrtch_ of Link’s knife on wood.

Zelda opened her journal to a page she had begun filling out yesterday afternoon. Having nothing else new to observe, and hesitant to explore the marsh with a plus one, she had made a list. She took her pen and inkwell out of her basket and wrote another observation:

_Observation #13: Link sticks his tongue out when he whittles._

Including this one, she had a list of different traits, quirks, and characteristics she had observed of Link over the past week, such as _Observation #3: Link frequently talks to the livestock_ and _Observation #7: Link cannot run long distances without becoming winded._

The latter Zelda had learned by watching him chase down Anju, as he seemed to do frequently. The chickens truly seemed to hate him.

Zelda snapped her journal shut, catching the way Link flinched at the sudden sound and glanced up at her. Ignoring him (as she was prone to do), she gazed off beyond the tree line, trying to catch a glimpse of the marsh beyond. She so badly wanted to get up and run, as fast as she possibly could, until she was there among the grasses and trees and _who knows what else?_ Curiosity burned inside her, the memory of that elusive blue-and-white flower in every corner of her mind. She had only seen it once, and for such a short while; what if it didn’t exist at all?

No. It existed. She just had to find it, farm boy be damned.

Zelda stood up abruptly, once again startling Link. She absently figured it best not to startle someone holding a sharp blade, but then she remembered she cared little for him, and cast the thought from her mind. “I’m going to the marsh,” she said firmly. “If you insist on following me, fine, but I will not acknowledge you and I refuse to let you get in my way.”

Link gave a slow nod and got to his feet, tucking his little whittling project into his back pocket and his knife into the front pocket of his worn, dark brown vest, the same color as his boots. With a roll of her eyes, Zelda fetched her basket, spun on her heel, and strode away. In a moment, his quiet footsteps trailed behind her, and even though she knew it would be coming, it still irritated her to no end. She swallowed her annoyance, focusing instead on the anticipation brewing in her stomach as the trees began to give way to the most marvelous sight she’s ever seen, so much so that her breath caught in her throat and any thoughts about Link vanished immediately as the marsh unfolded itself before her.

The wind whispered through billowing plumes of grass, creating an soft, rippling sea; beyond it a wide river of standing water snaked through the earth. A forest of tall, thin trees followed the waterline on the other side, long branches draping gently over the river. From where she stood Zelda could see bright flowers and mosses nesting in the crooks and crannies in the bark, little flecks of color on a green canvas. Fish darted about below the water, chasing dragonfly larvae through the seagrass as gnats and other little insects buzzed along the surface.

Zelda stepped forward, and her bare foot (and the hem of her gown) sunk into the wet soil with a _squelch_. She couldn’t help herself; she giggled, and took a few more steps until she reached the edge of the grass. She ran her hand through the soft plumes, watching the way little tufts broke off and drifted away in the wind, dancing with the dragonflies and damselflies against a backdrop of fluffy white clouds.

Zelda could hardly believe that she’d never been here before. An entire alien world right behind her house, and a month to live inside it, learning its language.

Near the water’s edge by one of these trees stood a bird, standing so still that Zelda almost didn’t see it. A crest of blue feathers adorned its head, matching the color of its large, folded wings. The bird’s strong black beak pointed at the water, watching, waiting, perfectly frozen in time.

“A heron,” Zelda whispered. She looked nervously at Link, wondering if he’d frighten it off with a sudden movement, but at some point he had crouched down to the earth, resting his arms on his knees, watching the bird curiously. 

The heron cocked its head, eyes trained on the water, before lunging forward in a flash of blue and white feathers, water flying, the sound disturbing the quiet ambience of the marsh. The heron emerged from the water victorious; a fish writhed frantically in its beak. Despite the fish’s best efforts, the heron held on tight, taking long, unhurried strides on stilt-like legs deeper into the forest to enjoy its meal in private.

Zelda wanted to follow the bird, to pick her way across the river and delve deep between the trees, finding curious mushrooms she could bring back home and delicate flowers to press in her journal. But then, she remembered: he was here, intruding on the most private part of her life, surely forming all sorts of judgements against her. Her excitement felt so temporary, then, like a butterfly released into the cage of her chest only to realize how trapped it felt inside the bone bars.

She turned her head ever so slightly, glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Link wasn’t looking at her; he was gazing off to the forest where the heron had vanished, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He hadn’t scared the heron off, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be positively annoying the rest of the day. As if he felt her gaze, he turned to look at her, lifting his eyebrow in that little questioning way.

Zelda quickly looked away. She had literally told him she wouldn’t acknowledge him, and she would hold to it!

She rummaged in her basket for her journal and bag of pencils and set to work, settling herself in a clear spot near the bank of the river, gentle grasses swaying pleasantly at her back. She crossed her legs and set her open journal on her lap. Though that lovely flower was nowhere in sight, and she longed to go hunting for it, she felt that she should keep it a secret. Her own little secret; she wanted Link to have nothing to do with it. She barely wanted him to know of her scholarly pursuits, yet here he was, practically _stalking_ her. Though, if he was curious at all of what she was doing, he had yet to let on. Or say anything, obviously.

“Talks to the cows but can’t talk to me,” Zelda muttered. She took out her pencil, chewing on the wood for a moment while hunting for something to sketch. She wanted to capture something absolutely _perfectly_ ; every anatomical feature present and accounted for. She could feel Link’s eyes on her, but she ignored him, instead choosing to become very engrossed in a piece of grass nearby.

Zelda spent the day sketching the world around her, taking notes on the properties of the grass and flowers nearby as the bright afternoon light faded into dusk. A particular flower had felt rather cool to the touch despite the warm day, and she wondered if there were some way to use that in a drink to help one stay cool themselves? She made a little note of it on the page next to the sketch she made.

Only when her eyes started to hurt by squinting so much against the dim light did Zelda realize how much time had gone by.

“Oh, its gotten quite late,” she murmured, surprised. She stood, brushing off her skirts. She had hardly noticed time passed at all. “I need to get back for dinner. Impa gets cross with me when I forget to eat.”

It was then she made unexpected eye contact with Link, who, at some point, began to entertain himself by pretending a stick was a sword, swinging it about as if he were fighting imaginary monsters. When she had spoken, he dropped the stick and quickly returned to his flat-faced, silent self she had grown accustomed to. Zelda had really forgotten he was there while she was working; she was speaking to herself, mostly, and his presence startled her. Annoyance tinged her words as she addressed him.

“You don’t have to...walk me home. In fact, I don’t want you to. Go and take care of the livestock. I’m sure they appreciate your company much more than I do,” she said coldly.

Of course, Link didn’t listen. At least, he followed her until they were safely out of the marsh and past the tree line, and back firmly on the manor grounds. Then, and only then, did he head off to the barn after a polite bow. Someone, Zelda knew that tomorrow he’d be waiting for her by that apple tree for whatever reason.

“It must be boring to just watch me sketch,” she remarked to Impa later that night, as they sat in Zelda’s room. Zelda lay on her back on her bed, Impa sat on the floor, brushing Terrako.

Impa looked at her curiously. “Why do you think that?”

“Well, for starters, Link hates me. Or, at the very least, he amuses himself by annoying me,” Zelda replied. “He never seems particularly pleased to see me, for he never speaks to me! Not once have I heard his voice. Not a single word.” She rolled on her stomach, facing Impa. “I should think if he enjoyed being around me, he would make the effort to talk to me.”

Impa shrugged. “I don’t know him well enough, I’m afraid, but if he hates you, why does he keep checking in on you?”

“Checking in on me?” Zelda scoffed. “Is that what you call it?”

“What else would it be?”

“Stalking, Impa. He follows me around _everywhere_! Especially when I try to leave the manor grounds.”

“I highly doubt he follows you everywhere, Zelda,” Impa said gently. “If he did, all of our animals would be dead, and surely you don’t spend enough time in the barn or the stables for him to do his work while simultaneously stalking you.”

Zelda frowned.

“I’m sure he only follows you off grounds because he wants to keep you protected,” Impa continued. “It isn’t exactly safe in the marsh, you know.”

“It’s completely safe, so his ‘protection’ is unnecessary.”

“There are alligators. Could you fight off an alligator?”

“I have never seen an alligator in the marsh.”

“You’ve been there once, Zelda.”

Zelda propped herself up on her elbows. “Yes, only once, and it was gorgeous and wonderful...but he was there! The entire time! How am I supposed to focus on being a scholar if he insists on following me around and keeping me from me work?”

Impa rolled her eyes. Only in the privacy of Zelda’s room did she dare to be this informal. “From the looks of your journal, it seemed as if he barely distracted you at all. You made a lot of sketches, and plenty of notes. Wouldn’t it be more distracting if he spoke to you?”

“That isn’t the point, Impa!”

“Then what is the point?”

Zelda fell silent. She didn’t know the answer. She just wanted Link to stop following her around as if she were made of glass.

A fragile glass girl.

She worried at her bottom lip.

“Perhaps,” Impa began, speaking slowly. “He irritates you because you don’t understand him.” She held up a hand as Zelda made a move to speak. “You like to know how people work. You’re the type to take things apart and put them back together again just to understand the mechanisms. You’ve never met someone like him before, and he does things that confuse you, and you can’t figure it out no matter how hard you try. And it’s harder because he won’t speak.”

Zelda furrowed her brow. “Scholars need to know how things work,” she said, absently.

Impa nodded. “But you don’t know how he works.”

Zelda rolled on her back again, staring at the ceiling. Link’s eternal silence was eternally frustrating, that she could admit. Was Impa right? Did she want to know what made him tick? Did the fact that she hasn’t figured it out yet irritate her to no end? She sighed, locking her thoughts away before the answers came to her.

“I just want to be a scholar by myself,” Zelda muttered, feeling pathetic. “It feels like he’s intruding on something private, and secret.” She hesitated before continuing, asking the question that’s been weighing her down ever since Link began to act as her new shadow. “What if he tells Father?”

Impa was quiet for a while, scratching Terrako behind the ears as he purred away, the sound reverberating through the room. When Impa spoke next, she sounded as if she chose her words carefully. “Maybe you should tell him, then.”

Zelda’s heart nearly exploded, and it was all she could do not to shriek. “Tell _Father_?”

“No! No. Tell _Link_.” Impa amended.

“Oh. Well. That isn’t exactly better,” Zelda grumbled. “I don’t just go around to everyone I see and announce I’m going to be a scholar. A female scholar.”

Impa sighed, exasperated. “You don’t have to. All I’m saying is that maybe, if you explain what you’re doing to Link, he’ll understand and keep it a secret. Right now, he doesn’t know what you’re up to, and if your father truly did hire him to keep you safe then yes, he might tell him about your adventures because he’s concerned about your safety. Try to imagine it from his eyes, Zelda. He doesn’t have a clue what you’re doing out there, and you’re incredibly defensive when he invades your privacy. I can’t really blame him for keeping an eye on you.”

“And you’re saying that if I tell him it’s for academic progress he’ll become that much more understanding and leave me alone.”

“Maybe.”

Zelda snorted. “I doubt it. He’s ridiculously annoying and I’m sure nothing I do will ever change that. Plus, I hate him.” She sat up, gathering Terrako, in all his snowy white fluffiness, from the floor. He stared up at her with his one blue eye, the same color as...

“ _UGH_. I should be glad Father doesn’t permit me to go to town if there are annoying boys like him about.”

Impa smiled. “I think Link is one of a kind, Zelda,” she said calmly, laughing when Zelda groaned even louder.

Zelda visited the marsh every day for the next five days, and each time Link appeared as if summoned from thin air to accompany her. Though he was easily forgotten once she became involved in her work, he was still _there_. Invading her privacy. Threatening her secret. She tried to keep her activities to simply sketching and taking notes, in hopes that he would assume it was all she was doing, and leave her be. After all, drawing is a relatively danger-free hobby. If he truly was there to keep her safe, surely he understood that she didn’t need to be protecting while sketching flowers in her journal.

But, despite Zelda’s best efforts to appear as safe as possible, Link remained, as did his complete and utter silence.

Zelda had explore every part of the marsh she could access; every stem of grass was inspected, every rock overturned and every crawling insect recorded in her journal. She sketched birds, dragonflies, butterflies, frogs, taking note of the way they moved and what they ate. There was one frog she saw on a cold and drizzly day that seemed quicker than any other frog she’d seen, and she immediately wanted to catch it, but it leapt into the river before she could make a move.

She wondered if Link would be able to catch it; she had seen his quick reflexes in work while chasing Anju around the manor, and just yesterday a wasp landed on his lunch and he killed it so fast that Zelda barely saw him move in the first place, only witnessing the aftermath.

She had added a tentative observation to her list: _Observation #22: Link is afraid of wasps (?)_

Today, however, she knew she had to cross the river. Any thoughts of remaining were gone; as much as she wanted to trick Link into thinking this a safe, innocent hobby, she wanted to explore this land even more. She had observed so much of this side of the water to the point where she knew almost every flower by heart, and her bare feet had worn miniature paths through the grass. But there was a beautiful marsh forest beyond the bank and she just _knew_ her elusive flower would be there.

And so it was with great confidence that Zelda hiked up her skirts, leaving her basket on the bank, and waded into the still, glassy water, the chill on her bare skin sent shivers up her spine. An explosion of tiny movement erupted around her feet as minnows darted away, trying to outrun the ripples she had created. She heard Link rustling through the grass behind her, stopping a respectful distance away but the weight of his gaze still burned at her back.

She turned to him, using her extra three inches to glare down at him as much as possible (though, the bank was higher than the river where the stood, so it was rather difficult).

“I am crossing this river. You may choose to do so or not.”

Link looked at her, then at the river. For a moment, hesitation was clear on his face (and Zelda was mildly proud of herself for recognizing it) but he said nothing at all. Of course.

Zelda swallowed her irritation at his silence and turned away. Her proud declaration soon proved to be more challenging than she thought, especially for a river of standing water. She took one strong step forward, skirts hoisted high above the water, but her foot sunk into the riverbed like a block of concrete. Mud oozed through her toes, gluing the soles of her feet to the bottom of the river as she tried to take another step forward, but the river refused to let her go.

Her hands slipped on her skirts at the sudden change in balance, already heavy fabric soaking up water and further weighing her down. She let out an exclamation of surprise as she tottered back, trying to regain her posture, but it was already too late. Gravity took hold and she tumbled backwards into the water, thoroughly soaking herself in the process.

Luckily, the river was rather shallow (only coming up to her knees when standing) so drowning was quite impossible, but Zelda couldn’t help but wish she died as she pulled herself to a kneeling position in the water, supporting herself with her hands, and locked eyes with Link.

He was standing much closer than he had been before, at the very edge of the riverbank, calves tensed as if he was ready to jump in after her and arms slightly outstretched. His posture might’ve made him seem heroic, perhaps, but the second Zelda saw his face her fury returned in full force, for Link had the had biggest smile she had ever seen from him plastered on his face. Which, Zelda knew, truly wasn’t saying much.

It was the kind of grin that one had when desperately trying not to laugh, lips pursed tightly together and delicate little crinkles around bright, sparkling eyes.

“Are you _laughing_ at me?” Zelda sputtered.

Link shook his head as he offered an assisting hand, which Zelda almost refused solely due to the mirth in his gaze. But she was unfortunately a lady, first and foremost, and a soaking wet one and that. She put her hand in his, surprised to see their hands were almost the same size.

She had long, delicate fingers like her mother, perfect for playing pianoforte (and for sketching wildflowers), soft from years trapped indoors. His palm was rough and calloused, with surprisingly nimble, but strong, fingers. His nails were a mess of uneven lengths, some long, others short, as if he simply let them grow, and when they broke, they broke. Zelda’s own nails were short, especially on her thumb, where she had chewed it to the quick. They both had dirt stuck beneath their nails.

Link gently pulled on her hand, tugging Zelda away from her scholarly observations. She attempted to stand, using Link as an anchor, but the mud had claimed her hem as well and she only succeeded in falling again, this time face first. Water flooded into her nose and she sputtered, trying to push herself up but her hands found no purchase on seagrass and algae and she slipped again.

Strong, surprisingly gentle hands slid around her, grabbing at her waist, pulling her (and her fifty pound skirts) from the river in one swift movement. She both gasped in surprise and for air, reaching out purely on instinct to grab at the first solid thing she came into contact with. Her hands landed on firm shoulders and held tight without her really realizing it, staining Link’s shirt with mud and the bit of algae she had torn from the riverbed.

Her perfect braids had come undone when she hit the water, and strands of her blonde hair stuck firmly to her cheeks and forehead, as rivulets of water cutting through the mud plastered to her cheeks. She could feel water draining from her nose unpleasantly. Her heart shuddered in her chest from the suddenness of what had just happened, of being submerged twice and then swiftly rescued, beating against her ribcage like a trapped bird.

Link carefully set her down on the bank they came from, his hands lingering on her waist until she was perfectly steady again, but her own hands remained clutched at his shoulders. He was still standing in the river, the water just high enough to soak into his trousers where they tucked into his boots.

His head tilted up to meet her gaze where she stood above him, elevated further by the bank, eyes searching her face in a way he had never dared do before. Zelda had realized before that he was most expressive through his eyes, but she had never really stopped to look at them without trying to read his thoughts. His eyelashes were long and dark and unfairly perfect. Their faces were close enough for their breath to mingle in the same space, for the water dripping from her untidy hair to trace lines down his cheeks, and only then did the reality of the situation come crashing down on Zelda’s waterlogged brain. 

Zelda shoved Link away so violently and abruptly that he fell backwards on his rear in the river, and without the support he had been giving her she quickly followed suit, tumbling to her knees in the water.

She knelt there for a moment, breathing heavily through her nose, staring at her own distorted reflection in the rippling water. She wondered if the water on her cheeks was still from her dripping hair.

When Zelda finally looked up, she saw that Link hadn’t moved; he was watching her in the way one would observe a wild, skittish deer, propped up backwards on his hands with most of his lower half completely submerged. “Will you ever stop following me around?” She snapped. She ignored the fact that without him here, she might’ve remained stuck in the mud at the bottom of this stupid river for a much longer time before she managed to get out.

Zelda continued, her tone harsh and getting louder by the second as her inner irritation boiled over, finding pleasure in the way his eyes widened slightly in surprise. Everything she and Impa had spoken of days before were gone, tucked away deep behind her anger. She didn’t want to be reasonable, she wanted to be mad. She wanted to lash out and say things that might not even be true.

“Do you want to know something? I _don’t like you_.” She practically spat the words. “You’re frustrating and irritating and annoying, and you insist on trailing behind me all the time like some kind of stalker and you refuse to listen to me when I tell you to stop. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you following me from day one. I’ll have you know I’m _incredibly observant_.”

She wrestled herself to her feet, water splashing, catching her balance on the bank. Once she pulled herself up to dry land, she spun to face Link again, droplets flying from her wet skirts. He hadn’t moved from his spot; he just watched her, mild confusion in the twitch of his brow. “I don’t know why you’re following me, or if my father put you up to this, but I’m absolutely sick of it! You can’t just follow people around in their own homes, especially women. It’s inappropriate! And creepy!”

Zelda didn’t even bother to wring the water from her hair, or her skirts. She glared down at Link furiously, and when he started to slowly get up, he never took his eyes off her. He watched her like she was a wild, cornered animal that would lash out if he moved too quickly. She wasn’t a skittish deer any longer. She waited until he reached the edge of bank, mimicking their earlier position, though neither of them were touching. Zelda’s arms were firmly crossed and Link’s hands were still at his sides.

“You know what?” Zelda said, her voice a scathing whisper. “I’m sure Father did hire you to...to.. to _stalk_ me! He probably wants to know everything about what I’m doing when he’s gone, to make sure I’m being a proper lady in his absence. That’s exactly something he would... _Well_ , even though I’m not the master of the house, I’m still his daughter, and I can order you around if I want.”

Zelda stabbed a finger into Link’s chest, forcing him to step back. She hoped he would fall in the river again, but he didn’t. “I do not need an escort! I am fine regardless of my father’s orders. Return to the manor and...feed the chickens, or whatever it is you do. You can tell Father when he returns that...this,” she spat, gesturing wildly with her arms, “is entirely unnecessary. So _stop following me!_ ”

She turned away, breathing deep and heavy from the exertion of shouting so loud, and bolted away. She left him standing in cold, cold river and didn’t stop running until she reached the manor porch, gasping for breath and shaking. The sun had almost set entirely, the sky a medley of fire. Her long, wet hair felt cold against her skin, as did her dress.

It was only as she was stopping to catch her breath and compose herself before she went inside that she heard his hurried footsteps behind her. As he got closer he slowed to a stop, right at the porch, not quite on the step but just before it, waiting for her to turn around and face him. Her infuriating shadow, back again.

When Zelda did turn, the only thought in her mind was that she truly wanted to slap him. “Do you really-“ she began, but she found her words stopped short.

Link stood there, not looking at her, with his arm outstretched. In his hand he held her basket; in her fury she had left it behind in the marsh. When she didn’t take it immediately, Link rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand and gently set the basket down on the porch step.

He looked up at her briefly, and there was something in his eyes that she didn’t quite catch, for he moved too quickly and she wasn’t that skilled in reading him just yet. In any case, he didn’t wait for her to find her words. He gave her a perfectly polite bow and left, and as Zelda watched him round the corner of the manor, she found that instead of feeling pleased and satisfied for telling him off, she felt entirely miserable.

With a sigh, she walked through the kitchen, ignoring Stamm’s exclamation of surprise at her appearance, and she came into the entryway where Impa and Purah were arguing about something. Her presence quickly won her attention, however.

“Oh, Zelda, what _happened_ to you?” Impa exclaimed, her shock so great she forgot to add the “Miss”.

Purah, who was not above laughing at someone else’s expense, said, “You look like a drowned rat.”

“Purah!” Impa scolded. “That’s not nice at all. If you insist on being rude, go do it somewhere else!” She grabbed Zelda’s arm and started to usher her upstairs. “Come on, Miss Zelda, I’ll draw you a bath while you drop your things off in your room and you can tell me everything.”

Later that night, after her bath, dinner, and an extensive talk with Impa, Zelda sat at her desk with Terrako twining between her legs, begging for attention that he wouldn’t get for quite some time. Her basket sat on the desk as well, but she was pointedly not looking at it, choosing instead to stare out the window into the lawn. Link was there, leaning cross-legged against the front gate with an empty plate balanced on his knee, whittling away with his little pocketknife. He looked as if he was whistling, but Zelda refused to open the window to hear the tune. She watched him as he worked, questions swirling in her brain.

After a little while, she opened her journal and took up her pen.

_Observation #14: Link has nice hands._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for everyone that’s read so far! This is truly a passion project but I’m having a lot of fun writing it. Leave a kudos and a comment if you enjoyed, and please let me know what you think! I love hearing feedback. You can find me at @_kbots on twitter, and though I rarely actually post, feel free to message me!  
> And remember that Zelda doesn’t know why Link keeps following her around, but she does have a suspicion that her father actually hired him to keep an eye on her, report back to him what she’s doing, etc. That’s why she’s so nervous around him, because if he tells her father about her secret scholar’s lifestyle, she’ll never be able to do it again.


	4. to become acutely aware of what i’ve taken for granted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation between friends, a nervous apology and an unexpected surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A double update! I know! This one’s a bit shorter, though. I’m not very proud of this chapter, except for the ending. I’ll probably return and adjust some things later on.

_July 29th_

_I haven’t been to the swamp in three days. Not since the river incident. I miss it, but I don’t want to face him. I don’t even want to write his name down on paper. I fear I’ve made such a terrible mistake; I said such awful things to him...but he still returned my basket. He didn’t even look mad, despite everything I’ve said. He has all the right in the world to despise me, but for some reason, he doesn’t. Whenever I’ve caught his eye looking out my window he always waves at me. Gods, he’s so confusing. Wouldn’t you hate me, if I said horrible things to you, and did nothing but treat you badly the entire time you’ve known me? He has to hate me. It doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t! I want to crawl inside his head so I can understand how he thinks. What Impa said about me must be true; I like to know how things work, including people, and the fact that I can’t figure him out...I don’t even know why this is upsetting me so much. I don’t like him!_

_The thing is, I’m scared. I’m terrified that if Link knows my secret, he’ll tell Father, and my scholar’s days will be over before they’ve even truly begun. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so wicked to him. But Impa seems to think he won’t tell. She also seems to believe he was hired by Father to keep me safe as well as care for the animals, but, honestly? I don’t know what to think. I first believed Father hired him to keep an eye on me, and report how proper I am in his absence. It’s something Father would do, really. He’s so obsessed with making sure I’m the perfect lady, but I don’t think he realizes I’m not my mother. I just want to be a scholar. I want to explore the marsh until I know it like the back of my hand, alligators be damned. But it seems it’s too much to ask._

Not for the first time that day alone, Zelda set down her pen with a deep, lung-quaking sigh. Her thoughts were more scrambled in her head than the eggs Stamm made for breakfast. She’d been holed up in her room ever since the river incident, ever since she lost her temper at Link, ever since he, in the face of her anger, returned her basket and didn’t hold a grudge.

“I don’t understand,” she groaned, tossing her journal to her pillow and dropping her face into her hands.

Terrako snuffled disinterestedly from his spot in her lap. She looked down at him through the cracks in her fingers.

“What am I supposed to do?”

The cat blinked at her, slow and lazy, and didn’t bother to give an answer.

Zelda sighed, petting the soft fur on his head. “I wish I was a cat. The world seems so much simpler from your perspective.” With a huff, she slumped backwards on her bed, nearly displacing Terrako from her lap. She would stay there all day, if she could. She had done it for nearly three already, what was another day?

Another day not spent exploring, her traitorous brain whispered.

“Then I’d have to face him,” Zelda muttered. “What am I supposed to do then?”

“Apologize.”

Zelda sat up so quickly she almost lost her balance. This time, Terrako leapt off her lap to find somewhere less rocky. “ _What_?”

Impa stared at her from the doorway, arms crossed firmly over her chest. Purah peered over her shoulder. “Zelda, honey, you need to apologize. You can’t spend the rest of your living days stewing in this room.”

“Even Terrako is getting sick of it,” Purah chirped.

“Purah, please,” Impa said tiredly, waving a hand. Her twin stuck her tongue out and bounded down the stairs. She watched to make sure Purah was gone, then entered the bedroom, closing the door lightly behind her. She snatched the brush off the vanity and sat down next to Zelda on the bed. “Turn around.”

Zelda obeyed, and Impa began to brush her hair with long, smooth strokes. “I do genuinely think you should apologize to Link. It’ll help you feel better,” she said in her gentle, calming voice.

“I don’t understand the point of apologizing. He must hate me,” Zelda said weakly, “and that won’t change after how rude I was. Perhaps if I was only rude for a short time, but I was rude for over a week. People have hated others for lesser things.”

“He does not hate you and you know that,” Impa said firmly. “You’re just trying to convince yourself that he does, for whatever reason. If he actually did, it would make his actions the past few days incredibly confusing.”

Zelda twisted around to look at Impa. “His actions?”

“Yes, his actions. Turn back around, please.” Once Zelda did, Impa continued. “He’s been moping all over the place. He actually came in for breakfast yesterday just to lurk around the steps, waiting for you to come down. Of course, you never did,” - Zelda winced - “so he went outside and pretended to tend to the flowers just so he could keep an eye on your window. He drove poor Robbie insane. He practically destroyed Robbie’s precious nightshades...apparently he knows next to nothing about flowers.”

“Oh, dear. Has Robbie recovered?”

Impa put the brush down and started to braid Zelda’s hair with deft fingers. “He will, in time. I think you owe _him_ an apology too, for it’s partly your fault that Link is in such a state.”

Zelda pursed her lips. “I can’t imagine why he’d be in a state over me. Impa, I’ve been so _awful_ -“

“It appears that he _misses_ you, Miss Zelda,” Impa interrupted, tugging on Zelda’s half-finished braid. “I believe that he was under the impression you two were having fun.”

“Up until the point I screamed at him,” Zelda muttered, trying not to think of the confusion in his eyes when she did.

Impa sighed. She felt as if she were a hundred years older than she truly was, scolding her grandchild. “He’s just worried about you, Zelda. Any friend would. It wouldn’t kill you to apologize.”

“It very well might!” Zelda protested, dutifully ignoring the idea of Link being her friend.

“It will not.” Impa tied off the braid with a ribbon and gently turned Zelda around to look her in the eye. “I know this is hard for you, Zelda. I know that you have a lot to hide, and you’re afraid you’ll lose it all. But that doesn’t excuse your actions and the way you’ve treated Link. Whether or not he dislikes you remains to be seen, but you still need to apologize.” She smiled. “It’s what a lady would do.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “Oh, good. Now I _really_ want to. Thank you, Impa.”

Impa chuckled. “Look, Zelda. Think of it this way. You’ve spent over a week with him. You can’t truly tell me that you hated every second he was around.”

“I-“

“Think about it first.”

Zelda exhaled through her nose and turned away, fidgeting with the tail of her braid. She went over the logical, stone-truth facts in her brain:

Link follows her around, jeopardizing the secrecy of her scholarly pursuits and thoroughly irritating her. He refuses to speak to her. He is working for her father, officially as a farmhand, and perhaps unofficially something else. He might report back to her father with news of what she’s doing, or how improper she’s acting.

Zelda furrowed her brow. She tugged at her braid so hard that the ribbon came loose, Impa’s hard work unraveling, but Zelda was too lost in thought to notice. Impa didn’t try to pull her attention away; she knew her Zelda too well to even attempt it.

Link. He helped her out of the river when she fell. After she was rude to him, he still took the time to bring her back her basket. He never asked her what she was doing, or tried to pry into her secret life. All he really did was follow her and make sure she was safe, a fact proven by the way he only shadows her when she’s leaving the manor grounds, and how he immediately helped her when she fell in the river.

Zelda thought back to a time last week, before this all occurred. She had wandered into the barn, bored and restless but unwilling to have Link chase her down to the tree line. As long as she was on the grounds, he would leave her alone, so she’d decided to visit the horses. Her father once promised to buy her a horse; she wanted a lovely white stallion that she would name something majestic, like Storm. The horse was never bought, however.

In any case, she still had a certain fondness for horses. When she’d entered, the stable was blessedly empty, and she had immediately rushed over to her favorite horse. He was a beautiful roan stallion with a soft coat in such a _fascinating_ hue of gray that it looked blue in the right light, and a pale mane that flowed down his neck like water.

“Hello, Satori,” she’d whispered, and the horse had nickered back, bumping against her hand with his nose. She’d scratched behind his ears the way she knew he liked. She’d noticed his mane and tail had recently been braided. “You look so handsome! Who’s done up your hair?” (She had a suspicion, but didn’t address it.)

A thump had come from the door at that moment, and Zelda had realized her terrible mistake. She had miscalculated the timing; she’d been sure he would be feeding the chickens. But no, Link had appeared in the open doorway of the stable with a bucket of feed in each hand, pausing on the threshold when he spotted her.

“Hello,” Zelda had said, a bit uncomfortably. Satori had nudged her hand again.

Link, ever the conversationalist, had nodded, and went to his work.

When she’d turned back to Satori, he’d been staring at her with those great amber eyes. Satori had a way of calming Zelda down with his gentle, quiet demeanor, unlike any other horse she’d met before.

Zelda had turned to Link, her hand nestled in Satori’s mane. “You know,” (she remembered feeling particularly brave), “I have it on good authority you can actually speak.”

She had noted the way he turned to face her, his expression unreadable. Zelda wondered if she’d be able to read it now, after a week of secretly studying his face.

“Multiple times I’ve seen you speaking to the horses,” she’d continued, “yet, I’ve never seen you converse with a person. Why is that?”

Link had, predictably, said nothing. He’d pursed his lips, furrowed his brow, cast his eyes to the ground. The horse beside him had chuffed, waiting for food.

This is where Zelda had decided to take a shot in the dark, though she wasn’t sure why, even now. “You must prefer the company of animals, then. I can understand that. In all my observations I’ve found that animals are much easier to get along with than people.”

He’d looked back up at her, and the tense expression on his face had started to ease. After a beat, he gave her a small, genuine smile before returning to his work.

Zelda looked down at her lap. She had been so _proud_ of herself for reading him correctly, because he was such a painfully difficult person to read. Even as she thought the words, however, she knew they weren’t true; when she had bothered to try, Link wasn’t so hard to read after all. She just had to look, really.

“Well?” Impa said impatiently.

Zelda jumped. She’d forgotten Impa was still there. “I’m sorry, Impa, I’ve been distracted so much today-“

“Yes, yes. I know. But answer my question. Did you truly hate every second that he was around?”

Zelda thought of his small little smile. The triumph she felt at recognizing his feelings.

“No, Impa,” she replied, a little breathlessly. “I don’t think I did.”

“Well, I’m glad you ruined your hair for that little realization.” Impa took the mangled braid back in her skillful hands and quickly repaired the damage. “If you didn’t hate being around him, then what makes you think he hated being around you?”

The simple question stopped Zelda short. She had been so convinced she was irritated and frustrated with him that, in the face of the truth, she was stumped. “I don’t...”

“Exactly, Zelda.” Impa squeezed her shoulder. “You can’t get so caught up in your own feelings. I think he genuinely had fun with you and didn’t mind your company, but you were so convinced that you had to hate him that you didn’t even notice.”

“Well, in my defense, he has been following me around. That’s still incredibly creepy.”

“It is, but we don’t know the reason for it. That’s why you need to ask.”

Zelda huffed. “I have asked. He never answered!”

“Did you ask, or did you yell?” Impa asked, her tone full of endless patience.

Zelda glared at Impa for a beat before flopping back on her bed. “I yelled,” she admitted.

“Exactly. He doesn’t seem to be the most conversational person on the earth, so I can’t blame him for getting a little clammed up when a very angry girl begins to yell at him.”

Zelda said nothing, choosing to grumble instead.

“So,” Impa said, leaning over Zelda. “Are you going to go to apologize to him today?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to say.”

Impa patted Zelda on the cheek. “It’s a good thing you scholars know plenty of words, then. You can figure it out.” She smiled and stood, brushing off her skirts. “You come back and tell me what happens, okay?”

At Zelda’s affirmation, Impa took her leave, closing the bedroom door behind her to give Zelda some privacy.

Zelda remained where Impa left her on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“I have a lot to apologize for,” she said aloud. “I was cruel and improper, and I didn’t give him a chance to defend himself at all. What if he truly was just trying to keep me safe?”

She sat up, facing the window. Outside, the trees swayed with the wind, an indefinite, graceful dance. Her eyes drifted down, down, down, from the trees, to the long dirt road, to the front fence, to the yard. From her spot she could see most of the lawn, including Robbie’s garden, but not the chicken coop or barn. She found herself standing to get a better angle, searching for him, looking once again to see if he truly didn’t hate her like Impa insisted, but he was nowhere to be found. She crossed the room to her chair, where Terrako had found his refuge, and sat on the floor with her back against the desk.

“I called him all sorts of names, yet he doesn’t seem the slightest bit upset. He just seemed...confused.” Zelda scratched Terrako behind the ears. “Like he didn’t understand why I was angry. Which, I suppose he doesn’t. I haven’t really...spoken...to him about it.”

Terrako looked at her, purring.

“I suppose it’s unfair of me to lash out at him when he doesn’t even know what’s going on,” she murmured. “And I suppose if he doesn’t hate me, and I don’t actually hate him like I thought I did, we could be friends?” Zelda glanced questioningly at her cat, who gave no answer. “I really did think him annoying, though. Perhaps I was too stuck in my own fear to see that he wasn’t really causing any harm, like Impa said. Do you think he’ll forgive me?”

Terrako blinked at her.

Zelda bit her lip and nodded. “You’re right. There’s only one way to find out.”

Zelda stood, new-found determination in her step. She didn’t bother to change even though she’d been wearing the same dress for three days, and it had gotten rather wrinkled. She left her shoes in her closet and rushed down the stairs, nearly bowling over poor Moza on her way out the door.

She found him in the barn. He was in the loft, stabbing at hay with a pitchfork and tossing it into a pile to be baled later. He didn’t turn right away when she climbed the ladder, but she knew that he was aware of her presence when he tilted his head in her direction slightly.

She waited for him to finish his task, rocking back and forth on her heels. Though she had just talked through everything with Impa (and Terrako), now that she found herself here, in front of him, she had completely forgotten what to say at all. Her nerves frayed more and more the longer he took, and her urge to turn tail and run back to her room burned like a wildfire inside the cavern of her chest.

Finally, after what felt like a hundred years, he turned to face her, leaning on his pitchfork. Concern was painted over his face, and for a second, Zelda wondered why she ever thought he was expressionless at all. The cracks in the ceiling of the barn let in the soft light, the hay-strewn ground dappled with gold. They stood there for a moment, a nervous girl and a quiet boy, staring at each other in the heat of the afternoon with difficult words stuck in their throats.

“Um,” Zelda said.

Link leaned forward slightly, lifting his eyebrows in question. He had hay in his hair and on his trousers. He looked like a lanky scarecrow brought to life, stuffing sticking out of his clothes.

“I...want to...no, _need_ to apologize,” she said softly. “I’ve been...I’ve been so horrible to you since the beginning, and I haven’t even given you a chance. I was so set on...on hating you that I hardly thought of your own feelings, and that’s not okay. You never knew the reason behind why I lashed out at you so much for following me around, so it isn’t really your fault. It isn’t your fault to all.” She hesitated, closing her eyes to steel her nerves. The soft earthy smell of hay filled her nostrils; she breathed it in deep, grounding herself.

“I...have a secret that absolutely cannot get out to my father. If he learns it, my life as it is now will be over, and I...” she worried at her bottom lip, eyes burning. Her voice quivered, despite her best efforts to stop it. “I can’t let that happen, Link.”

Zelda opened her eyes to see Link watching her, unwavering in his attention. He was listening so intently and seriously that for some reason, it made everything a little easier. A little better. She had never had someone truly listen to her before, besides Impa. She forced herself to continue, dropping her gaze to her hands. She was picking at her nails again, pulling at the skin around the cuticles.

“The reason I’ve been so cruel to you was because I feared you would learn my secret and tell my father. I thought you were a risk to everything I’ve ever hoped for, and that scared me. It really, really scared me. I didn’t know, - and I still don’t - why you’ve been following me around, but Impa believes it’s for my protection. I thought the worst, and believed you some kind of...spy for my father. But whatever it is, it still doesn’t warrant my treatment of you. None of it was okay. And I won’t ask,” she added quickly, “as it would be awfully hypocritical of me as I’ve been keeping secrets myself.” She looked up at him, anxiety flooding her system like a tidal wave, but she fought through it. “And I thought you hated me. I still kind of do, actually,” she muttered.

Link stared at her for a good, long while, after that, blue eyes wide. He leaned back off his pitchfork, putting his weight on his feet. His heavy gold brows were furrowed in an emotion she couldn’t quite place; it was one Zelda hadn’t seen before. Contemplation, maybe?

Zelda felt inexplicably nervous. She knew her fingers were bleeding around the nail bed by the way they stung. She looked down at the dry hay scattered about her bare feet, trying to focus on the way it itched at her soles instead of Link’s silence, but she didn’t have to for long.

“Miss Zelda, I have a confession to make.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. If you liked it, feel free to leave a kudos and a comment! As always, I love feedback.  
> I feel this chapter was a little strange for some reason, but I wanted to post it anyway, just because. Let me know what you think, and if anything was confusing or just plain silly.


	5. i was in the middle before i knew that i had begun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> talks and promises made in a dusty hayloft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short, I know. This one was REALLY difficult for me to write, for some reason! I scrapped the first draft entirely because I hated the direction it was going, and tried to power through it. There are some parts I really like about this chapter, but overall, I'm not proud of it. I hope you guys think it's okay!

Zelda didn’t like surprises. She never had, not even as a child. Perhaps that explained her urge to become a scholar; if she knew how everything worked, if she found the patterns and learned to predict the outcomes, she would never be surprised. She appreciated the simple, the predictable, the _expected._

Link was none of these things.

It had been nearly two weeks since Link first arrived, and Zelda had grown accustomed to his silence. His lack of words, though irritating at times, was perfectly predictable. It became a fixture; an immovable boulder in the otherwise unpredictable sea of his personality. He remained a mystery to her, a confusing puzzle unlike anything Zelda had ever seen, but she could at least count on the fact she would never hear his voice. It was the one thing about Link that Zelda felt a certain and undeniable truth.

Link, however, seemed determined to ignore all of Zelda’s expectations and continued to surprise her instead, over and over again.

His words, his _voice,_ echoed in her mind like a broken phonograph.

_Miss Zelda, I have a confession to make._

Since the moment they met and Link’s silence became apparent, Zelda had wondered what his voice sounded like. She understood, at the time, that she would never hear it, so she eased her burning curiosity with her imagination. She expected his voice to be rough and gravelly, similar to past farmhands who used to work for the manor. A voice eroded by dust and hard work, with choppy, halting syllables from a tongue not used to speech.

But it wasn’t.

Link’s voice was inexplicably soft. He lacked the sharp angles and perfect annunciation of the higher class, instead speaking his words quietly but clearly in a gentle, lilting tenor. He had only spoken eight words, but Zelda was already mesmerized.

“Miss Zelda?” Link repeated, soft and honey-sweet.

The unfamiliar, surprising sound tore Zelda from her stupor. “What?”

Link didn’t reply; he was watching at her with those big blue eyes, the line of his shoulders almost _tense_ under Zelda’s own stare. He waited patiently until she recalled his earlier words; he had something to tell her.

“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry, I was just…I mean, I didn’t...” Zelda’s face flushed, her startled, confused brain getting the better of her. “Er, never mind. What is it you wanted to say?”

He kept his cool, steady gaze on her but didn’t immediately speak, and Zelda worried he wouldn’t at all. It felt strange asking him to speak and truly expecting a reply, but now that she had heard his voice, she didn’t want him stop.

After a beat of silence, impatience got the better of her, as it frequently did. “Is this about why you’ve been following me around everywhere?”

Link quirked a brow at her, leaning on his pitchfork with a smile on his lips, clearly amused. He said nothing.

Zelda flushed with irritation. “I swear you do this on purpose,” she said stiffly. “Will you just answer the question?”

He smiled wider. “Yes.”

“Yes _what_?”

“Yes. The answer to your question.”

“To why you’ve been following me?”

Link nodded, eyes sparkling with amusement at Zelda’s annoyance. The excitement she felt over finally hearing his voice had gone; she forgot how _irritating_ he was.

Zelda pinched the bridge of her nose, exasperated. “Okay. Wonderful. We’re getting somewhere. Would you mind _telling_ me what you were going to say, or are you going to make that difficult, too?”

Link grinned, and straightened, spinning the pitchfork in his hand like a baton until the prongs pointed toward the sky. Then, he _turned his back on her_ and returned to his work, pitching the hay into a stack in swift, easy movements.

The wind hummed outside the barn, whistling through the cracks in the planks and the open door at the end of the hayloft. The faint sound of clucking chickens and the gentle low of the cows drifted into the loft, but Zelda barely heard any of it. She stood frozen, feet rooted to the spot, dots of blood drying around her nail bed, staring wide-eyed and speechless at the boy before her. Anger boiled in her stomach, but she stamped it down; she would _not_ lose her temper again.

Instead, she forced herself to wait, impatient fingers toying with her skirts. Link didn’t leave her waiting long, however; he glanced at her over his shoulder and she briefly noticed his smile was gone.

“I wasn’t just hired to be a farmhand,”he said, and his voice, though quiet, seemed crushingly loud in Zelda’s ears. He kept working as she processed: the pitchfork stabbed the hay with a rhythmic _shff_ , golden strands dancing in the air as he tossed them to the pile, where they landed in a cloud of dust. In the soft afternoon sun, his hair was the same color as the hay.

Memories of her earlier talk with Impa flickered through Zelda’s mind. Her suspicions of Link’s espionage with her father, Impa’s belief he was merely trying to keep her safe. It was one thing to _think_ these types of things, but another beast entirely to have them come to light. Her nerves buzzed like a live wire, but she felt entirely exhausted at the same time. So much had happened over the past few days alone.

“What…” Zelda began, hesitantly, “what else were you hired to do?”

Link tossed a particularly large pile of hay; wild strands fluttered down and decorated his hair and shoulders.

“Were you hired to stalk me?”

He ran a hand through his golden locks, mussing up his bangs.

“My father wants to know what I do when he’s gone, doesn’t he? He hired you to see what I’ve been doing.”

He toyed with the pitchfork before gingerly leaning it against the wall of the loft, turning to face her.

“He wants to know if I’m being proper,” Zelda whispered. “but I’m not.”

Link’s eyebrow twitched. He looked sad, guilty, even. But he denied nothing.

Zelda closed her eyes, exhaled slowly. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Yes,” Link said, and Zelda felt her heart shatter into a thousand pieces. Her knees felt weak, and then gave out entirely, and when she tumbled to the ground the hay stuck to her gown like burrs and she hugged herself with the desperate belief it would keep everything inside. Years of sneaking around her father, planning her life perfectly so he would never see, never find out, wasted. Her father would destroy all her journals and lock her away forever, so she could never shame him again. All her hard work, gone, just like that. Gods, she was foolish to think she could ever be a scholar.

Zelda was so caught in her misery that she almost missed Link’s next words.

“And no.”

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up at him with a watery stare. “What?”

Link rubbed at the back of his neck, but he met the intensity of Zelda’s gaze all the same. “He hired me to keep an eye on you, but I’m not going to tell him what you’ve been doing.”

The earlier amusement in his eyes was gone. His blue eyes were firm and sincere in a way that Zelda hadn’t seen before, and it left her dumbfounded.

“You’re not…going…to tell him?” She repeated, slowly, because she still wasn’t sure she heard him right.

Link shook his head.

“ _Why?”_ The word came out shaky and breathless.

He shrugged. “It isn’t my secret to tell.”

Zelda must have been staring at him with so much confusion and raw emotion that he took pity on her. He knelt down in front of her with a heavy sigh, looking at the space between their knees instead of meeting her eye.

“Your father hired me as a farmhand, but on the ride back he told me what the rest of my job entailed. He refused to pay me if I didn’t go through with it, and he’d already driven me too far to walk back.” Link rubbed at the back of his neck. “I honestly thought it was just farm work. I wouldn’t have accepted otherwise.”

Zelda was silent; any words she could say were stuck in her throat, her emotions cementing her mouth shut like the toffee Stamm had made once for a birthday, long ago.

Link continued, picking at a hole in his trousers. “I fully intended to do the entire job. I didn’t exactly have a choice, as I had no way back, and I needed the money. But…” he trailed off. The hole got larger; he abandoned it in search of something else to occupy his hands. 

“But what?” Zelda whispered. She didn’t think she could be louder if she tried.

“I wasn’t expecting…” he hesitated, searching for his words. He spun a strand of hay between his fingers, watching the way it twirled in the light. “I wasn’t expecting _you_.”

Zelda blinked, her voice escaping her once again.

To her surprise, Link’s face flushed when he realized what he said. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m not good with words.”

The anger at her father ebbed away slightly; Link’s stoic mask had slipped, just a little, giving Zelda a tiny glimpse of something she didn’t quite expect.

“It’s…it’s okay,” she said softly. “Neither am I.”

At this, he smirked. “You’re always full of words.”

“That hardly means I’m good with them.”

He chuckled quietly, falling silent.

Zelda studied Link, neither of them speaking. The tense line of his shoulders had eased, if only a little, and his twitching fingers had stilled.

After a long while, long enough where both their knees began to ache from kneeling on the dusty hayloft floor, Link continued.

“Whatever you’ve been doing…it makes you happy. I knew you didn’t want me there, but there were times you forgot about me, and during those times…I don’t know. You looked like you didn’t want to be anywhere else but there in the mud.” His eyes met hers. His expression was unreadable. “I didn’t expect that from what your father said about you.”

“Were you expecting I’d be taking gentleman suitors in by the dozen?” Zelda asked drily.

Link snorted, the sound surprising her. “Something like that. But whatever you’re doing out there… I didn’t - I _don’t_ want to take that away from you.”

“But you don’t even know what I’m doing.”

He shook his head. “I don’t need to.”

They quieted again. Link shifted so he was sitting cross-legged instead of kneeling, and Zelda smoothed her skirts just to give herself something to do. She could hear Romani, the calf, lowing in the barn below. She wondered, absently, what she and Cremia had to talk about. Did they, too, have difficult conversations with almost-strangers, where neither really know what to say, but they know something must be said, just to fill the silence?

“I have a question,” Zelda said suddenly. So suddenly that she didn’t even realize she was saying it. But the question was on her mind, and sometimes Zelda couldn’t control her tongue.

Link looked at her inquiringly, waiting for her to continue. 

“Why did you keep following me if you weren’t planning on telling my father?”

Link shrugged. “Swamps are dangerous.”

“It’s a _marsh._ ”

He gave her a look, and she tried not to smile.

“So you just wanted to keep me safe?”

Link nodded. He had returned to the hole in his trousers.

“Did my father also ask you to do that?” Zelda asked, but deep down she knew the answer. So when Link shook his head _no_ , it didn’t hurt as badly as she expected it to.

Link still had that strange look on his face as he continued to pick away at his pants, the strands of hair that didn’t quite make it to his ponytail brushing at his cheeks. It wasn’t a look Zelda had seen before, and she wanted desperately to understand it. She wanted an encyclopedia of his emotions and expressions, so when a confusing one surfaced, she’d be able to decipher it.

If only everything were that simple.

“Link?”

He looked at her.

“Why don’t you speak?”

The abruptness of the question seemed to startle him, but the way he exhaled a sigh and stared distantly at the floor implied it wasn’t the first time he’d heard it. He didn’t look at her when he replied.

“It’s easier to be quiet than to worry about saying the wrong thing.”

“Is that the only reason?”

His eyebrow twitched, his lips pursed.

_I guess not_ , Zelda thought. “That’s fine. We don’t have to discuss it. We need to talk about something else, anyway.”

Link glanced at her questioningly.

“My own secret,” she explained. “You’ve told me yours, so I suppose you want to know mine. Why I’ve been going off into the marsh, and why I’ve shouted at you so much for following me.” She winced as she spoke the words, reminded of her own rudeness, but Link just shrugged it off with a shake of his head.

“It’s really only fair,” Zelda protested. “But you must promise not to laugh.”

At this, he turned to fully face her, eyebrows quirked.

“I’m being serious! This is…very important to me.”

His eyes softened slightly, but his amused smile stayed firmly on his lips. He tilted his head in interest. Asking for her to continue.

“W-well…it’s…” _How did I explain this to Impa and Purah?_ “It’s hard to explain. I don’t really talk about it. I’m not supposed to…be doing what I’m doing.”

Link leaned forward a little, expression patient.

_Just spit it out, Zelda._

“I want to be a scholar,” she said hurriedly. “A real scholar. One that explores and observes and writes papers on their findings and changes the world.”

He blinked, surprise coloring his features, and Zelda immediately looked away before she could see what that expression changed in to. Horror? Disgust? What if he laughed at her for having such a ridiculous, unrealistic dream? She never should have told him - she should have _lied_ and said she was really into something ladylike, like gardening, and she just wanted to look at all the marsh plants because she thought they were _pretty_. She looked up for just a brief moment to see him studying her. Her heart thundered in her chest and she could feel the palms of her clenched fists sweating where they clutched at her dress.

Then, Link smiled, soft and sweet. “It suits you,” he said gently, and she blinked up at him in surprise.

“You’re…okay with it?”

He gave her a questioning look, and her face flushed.

“Some people think it highly improper for a woman to do this kind of thing. Ladies are not meant to be _curious_. Father is one of those people, which is why this must be kept a secret!”

Link hummed, nodding in acknowledgement.

“If my father found out…oh, he would be so upset with me. I can’t begin to imagine what he would do,” Zelda said softly. “I’m already not allowed in town, but if he discovers my secret I fear I’ll never be let out of the manor again.” She tried to look as stern as possible, furrowing her brows and calming the tremor in her voice. “So you must never tell! You cannot speak a word of this to anyone at all.”

When he raised his eyebrows in amusement, she thrust out her pinky finger.

“ _Promise_ ,” Zelda demanded.

He looked down at her hands, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. But he lifted his own hand all the same, wrapping his pinky around hers, and _squeezed_. “I promise,” he said, in that soft, soft voice of his.

“Good.”

Zelda moved to drop her hand, but Link didn’t let go; instead, he pulled her hand a little closer to his chest, looking at her so intently that Zelda feared her face would start aflame.

_Irritating,_ she thought absently, and tried to ignore the fact she really didn’t mean it. She hated how fast her opinion of him had changed. All it took was one apology and the truth to get in her good books, apparently.

“It’s your turn to promise, Miss Zelda.”

She frowned. “Sorry?”

“I promised to keep quiet. You must promise to let me keep accompanying you.”

Zelda stared at him. “We just went over all of this. You said you wouldn’t be telling my father, so there’s no point in going with me anymore.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“There isn’t! You’re perfectly free to _do your job_ instead of follow me around.”

“My ‘job’ _is_ following you around,” he retorted, smooth as silk. “I’ll technically be “keeping an eye on you” if I’m with you, but I only want to keep you safe.”

Zelda’s pride pushed past her logic. “I do _not_ need protection. We’ve been over this many times, too. I’m _perfectly fine!_ ”

He gave her a flat look. His pinky squeezed hers. Though she gave him her hardest glare, he didn’t waver.

Link wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and Zelda knew it. It wasn’t like he’d ever listened to her before.

After a long, hard silence, she groaned. “ _Fine._ But you absolutely cannot get in my way. I’m there for _science._ ”

He smiled, solidifying their dual promise with a quick shake of their joined hands.

Then, Zelda realized how _close_ he was, and pulled her hand away. Her face felt hot. She silently cursed her father for not letting her go out into society; as a consequence, she had no idea how to handle _boys._

She assumed most Castletown boys were nothing like Link, though. Most Castletown boys probably wouldn’t annoy her the way he does.

_Gods,_ she had a lot to tell Impa.

“Well,” Zelda said lightly, “I should let you get back to work. Half your job is farmwork, after all.” She stood, brushing the hay off her skirts. “I’m going to go take a nap, because my brain hurts.”

Link got to his feet with a grace that rivaled Impa’s.

“We can go to the marsh tomorrow. I won’t try and sneak out this time.”

At her words, Link smirked. He gave her a short, fluid bow before fetching his pitchfork.

As Zelda crossed the length of the loft she listened to Link’s movements, trying to picture what he was doing in her head as she walked away. He had paused for a moment before he resumed pitching the hay. She wondered what he was doing.

She reached the ladder and stopped, her hand on the top rung. Hesitated. Looked back at Link. He wasn’t facing her, but she was sure he knew she hadn’t left.

“Link?”

He hummed a questioning note.

“You’re really okay with it?”

He straightened, leaning the pitchfork on his shoulder, angling slightly so she could see the side of his face. His blue eyes were sparkling with mirth, and dappled sunlight bounced off his hair.

“Miss Zelda,” he said sincerely, “you’d be much more boring if you were proper.”

Zelda’s face flushed, but as she descended the ladder to his quiet laughter she had a tiny smile on her face.

_Observation #15: Link has a lovely voice._

_Observation #16: I think I was wrong about him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys liked it! 
> 
> I LOVE reading all the comments you've left, they make my day so much brighter. Feel free to reach out to me on my twitter, it's @_kbots   
> I don't post very often but it's a good way to contact me if you want to!
> 
> Leave a comment and a kudos if you enjoy my work, and hopefully the next chapter will be out soon. <3


	6. i shall sow flowers in your hair so the bees may whisper love poems in your ear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two silly people in a marsh dancing around each other

_July 30_ _ th _

_Today shall be a strange day. I’m quite sure of it. A lot happened yesterday, and I’m still processing it. I’m furious with Father for doing such a thing! It was unfair of him, both to me and to Link. Not only is he intruding on my own personal privacy (and almost ruining my life), how dare he put Link in such a situation? He could hardly refuse him at that point, and I’m sure Father knew it._

_I can hardly believe I’m defending Link. Just four days ago, I was so irritated by him…I suppose I feel bad for misjudging him. I assumed he was acting under Father’s actions, but I also assumed he was a bad person for doing it. After all, no sensible person would agree to stalk a person’s daughter and get paid to do it. It’s such a creepy job! You can hardly blame me for being suspicious! But…I wasn’t expecting him to be kind, I suppose. He told me he wouldn’t inform Father of my pursuits because he could tell it made me happy, and he didn’t want to take that away. And he insisted on accompanying me still, even though I told him he didn’t have to, because he wanted to keep me safe. I don’t think a wicked person would say those kinds of things. Especially after I yelled at him._

_I doubt I’ll ever stop feeling awful about that._

_In any case, he’s officially accompanying me to the marsh today, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It felt nice to have someone want me safe, but still, I like to do my work alone. I have too many anxieties about this whole situation to count. What if Link asks me a million questions about what I’m doing? What if he doesn’t leave me alone, so I can’t get any work done, and he scares off all the frogs?_

_What am I saying? He barely speaks. I’ve never met a quieter person! Even his voice is quiet._

_Which is another curiosity. He said he’s bad with words, and he’s afraid of saying something wrong, but there seemed to be something else behind it. He had a kind of…hesitation, when I asked him about his silence. Like there was something he didn’t want me to know, or that he was ashamed of, perhaps. He’s still just as confusing as before, potentially even more so now that I’ve heard his voice. I can’t help but want to understand him further. It would be much simpler if he was a clock, and I could take him apart and inspect all of his machinery._

_Alas, he is a human being. Much more complicated than a clock._

She found Link waiting for her at the tree line, cross-legged on the grass, bent over his latest whittling project. The moment he heard her approach, he looked up, pausing in his work. His hair was ridiculously messy, as usual; he always had a thick lock of stray hair on either side of his face, framing his sharp features, that he never seemed to be able to keep in his ponytail. A piece of hay stuck haphazardly out of his bangs at a wild angle, but he didn’t seem to notice it.

Zelda greeted him, plucking the hay from his hair. She tried not to laugh when he went cross-eyed watching her hand.

“You shouldn’t cross your eyes like that,” Zelda told him. “They might get stuck that way forever.”

She didn’t believe that, of course. It was a just silly thing her mother always told her. Judging by the way Link raised his eyebrows at her, he didn’t believe it either.

“What are you making?”

Link opened his hand, revealing his work.

Zelda blinked. “What…is it?”

“It’s Anju,” Link said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Why does she have two heads?”

“That’s her tail _._ ”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“It’s a _tail.”_

Link’s defensive tone caused a smile to tug at Zelda’s lips, despite her best efforts to remain serious. She didn’t like how _easy_ it felt to talk to him now, to tease him; they had only truly spoken once before!

So why did it feel so nice to talk to him?

Zelda straightened so rapidly that Link looked up at her with a start, eyes wide. “Shall we go?” she asked, pointing through the trees.

Link quirked a brow at her, one side of his mouth twitching upward in a silly, amused little smile, but he got to his feet and tucked his knife away. He swept his arm out in an extravagant gesture toward the marsh, one that clearly read “ _ladies first”._

Zelda rolled her eyes, restraining a smile, and bolted, Link on her heels. Feeling very much like an excited child in the best way possible, she broke through the trees at a run, grass catching at her skirts and cool, wet dirt staining the soles of her bare feet. She only stopped once she reached the bank of the river that engulfed her only days before. It sparkled up at her, little fish scattering from her shadow. The sun shone cheerily from its spot in the great blue sky, turning the grass into gold and the dragonflies into shards of brightly colored glass. The air felt pleasantly warm, a gentle breeze kissing at her cheeks like a long-lost relative come to visit. She couldn’t help it; she flung out her arms and spun in place, once, twice, three times, letting her skirts flare around her and her basket swing so wildly it nearly hit Link in the face. He ducked, of course; his reflexes never failed to amaze Zelda the few times she’s witnessed them in action, usually while chasing the chickens across the lawn.

Zelda slowed to a halt, facing Link, who was watching her with an amused expression, eyebrows raised. In the sun, his hair looked gold.

“Isn’t it just wonderful?” she breathed, watching the path of a hawk as it circled through the sky, riding thermals to an unknown destination.

Link craned his neck to watch the hawk, and the two watched the bird until it soared out of sight beyond the tall marsh trees.

“I am happy today,” Zelda proclaimed, “for I know my secret is safe.” She said it confidently, but deep down, a little tendril of doubt still remained, one that made her so uneasy she couldn’t even write it in her journal. She tried her best to ignore it, and focused on the feeling of freedom instead. She loved the marsh, and cherished each moment she spent here. She didn’t want to tarnish this beautiful place with her dark, intrusive thoughts, the ones that told her Link was lying, and has been the entire time.

Zelda tugged herself from her prickly thoughts that clung to her mind like burrs, breathing in the sweet marsh air with a sigh. Then, she noticed Link looking at her, and she felt her face heat. She quickly turned away. She had been staring distantly in his direction as her thoughts carried her elsewhere, but he had met her gaze and held it, watching her. She had noticed he did this often; it was one of her early observations about him. He never looked away despite the impropriety, never flushed from embarrassment at the length of eye contact like Zelda often did. He would look as long as he liked, and averted his gaze only when he was good and ready.

Zelda wondered how often he looked at her when she wasn’t looking back.

She _immediately_ pushed the thought from her mind.

“I want to catch a frog today,” Zelda said. “I’ve always wanted to catch a frog, and I believe today is the day.”

Link raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Zelda propped her fists on her waist. “I was raised _indoors_ , and taught how to sew, and paint, and…walk around with a book on my head! I don’t know how to…I don’t know, tie knots and whittle and make fires, the kind of things you boys all know.”

“Not all boys can whittle.”

“You certainly can’t,” she retorted, delighting in the way his eyes went wide with shock, and she laughed out loud against her will. “I’m going to work now. You can…do whatever it is that you do, I suppose? Just stay out of my way.”

Zelda turned away before he could say anything, or make some silly expression at her, and settled on the bank. She dipped her feet in the river, and the coolness of the water felt nice against her skin. Leaned her elbows on her knees, she propped her chin in her hands and gazed at the minnows skirting around her toes.

“What shall I sketch today, little fish?” she inquired. “I’ve already sketched you little fellows, so I must move on to something else.”

Zelda freed one hand to pull her basket closer, fetching her journal. She set it on her lap and flipped through it, finding the page with the minnows. She’d drawn several of them; she noticed some of them were more colorful than others, with spots of red on their fins where others had none. She had read somewhere that males of many species were often more flamboyant in order to attract a mate; more bright, vivid colors meant better health, and that meant better genes for any would-be offspring. She had written several notes about it on the minnow page in her neat, precise writing.

“Perhaps I’ll look at some flora today. I’ve been observing an awful lot of fauna lately. No offense, of course,” Zelda told the fish, turning to a blank page. She retrieved a nice, sharp pencil that felt nice in her hand, and started to survey the landscape. She decided against any flowers; she’d already drawn quite a few of them, and there was only one flower she truly wanted to find, anyway. A few dragonflies danced on stained-glass wings along the river’s surface, swiftly avoiding the fish that tried to catch them. Somewhere, a woodpecker drilled against a tree, and Zelda lifted her eyes to the forest beyond the river, wondering again if her mystery flower lay in there.

She wasn’t quite prepared for a repeat of last time she tried to cross the river, however.

Zelda’s gaze bounced from tree to tree, trying to find the woodpecker, but one specific tree caught her eye. It looked a little different from the rest: it bent and twisted with lovely draping branches. It looked like a place where fairies would hide away, observing the world through gaps between the leaves, sleeping in the knots and nooks of the gnarled bark.

She smiled. “Perfect.”

And so, Zelda settled in, trying to capture the exact whimsy of the tree with delicate shapes for the leaves and light, barely-there lines for the grooves of the bark. She wrote down little observations as she worked, noting the way a squirrel can turn its back feet around to climb down a tree head-first, and other little things like that. The sun warmed her back, and after a while she took down the complicated knot Impa had tied in her hair that morning to let it hang around her shoulders. She sketched in silence for a while; she didn’t have a pocket watch, so she hardly knew how much time had passed, but she didn’t mind. The day was nice and warm, the river sparkling and cool; Zelda would spend all her life out here if she could.

Zelda had just starting to sketch in little hints of the surrounding environment, like the riverbank and the other trees, when she remembered that Link still existed. She remembered for a very specific reason; he was directly behind her, having materialized out of the air, evidently bored with whatever he had been doing all this time. He peered over her shoulder, trying to see what she was sketching.

“Link!” Zelda exclaimed, shielding her journal from his prying eyes. “What part of “ _stay out of my way_ ” did you not comprehend?”

Link gave her a crooked, mischievous smile. “I’m not _in_ your way. I’m behind you.”

“Oh my _gods._ ”

His crooked smile turned into a full-on grin, and Zelda very nearly groaned out loud. 

“You’re _much_ more annoying now that we’re friends,” she said irritably, but immediately regretted it as Link’s face brightened, that sparkle of humor shining in his big blue eyes.

“I did _not_ mean that. We aren’t friends.”

He cocked his head, much like a bird would, smiling even wider.

“We’re _not!_ ” Zelda exclaimed, leaning away from him as he leaned closer. “We’re…we’re _acquaintances._ ”

At this, Link drew back, an unimpressed look on his face. Zelda held his stare challengingly, but he said nothing, just smiled before wandering off among the grasses, leaving her to her sketching, and to her thoughts. She turned back to her journal and continued outlining the river, her head a scattered mess as all her intrusive little thoughts inched back into the scope of her mind.

Link _had_ told her being a scholar suited her, but what if he was just appeasing her? What if it was all an act, and now he’s trying to take a look at her journal to tell her father about it later?

She started shading, making sure her lighting was in the right spot.

Perhaps Link wanted her to trust him, and then she would open up? Reveal more secrets about herself that he could tell to her father?

She pressed down harder than necessary on her pencil as she drew a thick, aggressive line to form the edge of the water.

What if he was laughing at her idiocy, her obliviousness, right behind her back?

_Snap._

Zelda started. The tip of her pencil had broken; she’d pressed down so hard it snapped, leaving a dark smudge on the paper. She groaned, quietly; she didn’t have a knife or anything to sharpen it. She turned to her basket, aiming to find a different pencil, but Link appeared next to her as if summoned from thin air. He crouched down to her level, plucking the pencil from her fingers, and retrieved his pocketknife. With a few deft movements, her pencil was perfectly sharpened again.

When Zelda reached out to retrieve it, Link pulled it just out of reach, eyes sparkling.

“I forgive you for saying I can’t whittle,” he said, a smile in his soft voice despite his deadpan expression. He pressed the pencil into her hand, calloused fingertips brushing at her palm.

_Who am I kidding?_ Zelda thought. _There’s not a malicious bone in this boy’s body._

“You’re ridiculous,” she informed him, and he chuckled pleasantly.

“Are you done?” He asked.

“What?”

Link pointed at her journal.

“Oh. Am I done sketching?” At his nod, Zelda shrugged. “Well, I suppose so. I was drawing that tree, the twisted one.”

Link squinted across the river, following her pointed finger. “The one that looks like it has a face?”

“Yes, that one.”

He looked back at her, and Zelda panicked, afraid Link wanted to see her sketch. But, to her surprise, he didn’t ask at all. He stood, and nodded off toward a section of the marsh Zelda hadn’t explored yet.

“I want to show you something.”

Curiosity piqued, alright. “What is it?”

Link said nothing; he simply beckoned her to follow with a wave of his hand, and took off through the grass.

Zelda scrambled to her feet, haphazardly shoving her journal and pencil into her basket before racing after him, her bare feet still wet from the river’s cool water.

Link led her to the woods, past a pair of old trees, the kind with dark, thick trunks and gnarled branches that look like hands.

Zelda had to duck under them, but they grabbed at her hair and skirts. When she pulled away, annoyed, she caught Link smirking at her.

“You shut up,” she snapped, but there was no real heat behind it. “It’s not like I can cut my hair, and I certainly can’t wear _trousers._ ”

Link nodded solemnly. “You are very proper, Miss Zelda.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “Have we arrived yet?”

As a way of response, Link pointed to a little opening between the trees. Without waiting for him to follow, Zelda quickly ducked through the opening, and emerged into such a pretty sight that she gasped, the breath stolen from her lungs. She stepped forward into a meadow riddled with flowers; lovely pale white blossoms with purple centers, and bright yellow ones that looked like fallen drops of sunshine, among others.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” she gasped.

Link appeared beside her, smiling at her with that crooked little smile. “I thought you’d like it.”

Zelda quickly scanned the meadow for her special flower; she didn’t find it among the other blooms, but she tried her best to curb her disappointment.

If Link noticed, he didn’t show it.

She darted right to the middle of the meadow, dropping her basket to the soft green grass. She spun, slowly, taking in everything.

The meadow was ringed by trees, and went on over a little hill opposite the part of the forest she and Link emerged from. It was a genuine hillside of flowers, and if she listened, Zelda could hear all the delightful little bees bumbling about, visiting each and every flower. She wondered if their hive was nearby, and delighted herself imagining the taste of fresh honey and the warm earth at her back, watching the clouds drift on by.

But Zelda was a scholar at heart, and she had observations to record. She knelt on the grass and opened her journal, fetching the pencil Link had sharpened for her. She wanted to capture every one of these flowers in perfect detail; they were so lovely she felt a little bad about picking them to press, but she might not be able to stop herself.

Link, however, didn’t have the same mentality. He came and sat by her after a little while, holding a bundle of freshly-picked flowers. She hadn’t even noticed him picking them.

Zelda glanced him out of the corner of her eye as he started picking the leaves off all the stems, trying to pretend like she was still sketching. Her curiosity, as always, was getting the better of her and she knew it. He was so _damned_ strange - how could she not expend all of her attention trying to figure him out? Her pencil drew nonsense patterns on the page; her eyes were on Link.

She watched as Link carefully arranged the flowers by type from longest stem to shortest. He studied them for a moment before selecting a lovely yellow flower with a long stem. He laid a second flower, this one a soft white, across it, so that the stems ran perpendicular.

Zelda watched with bemusement as he wrapped the white flower’s stem around the yellow’s, then laid the stems flat against one another before picking a third flower and repeating the process. His hands were slow at first, careful and hesitant, but he soon picked up speed and fell into a well-practiced movement, wrapping the stems around each other to form a sturdy chain. After a while Zelda forgot she was supposed to be pretending; she was that absorbed in watching Link work. In a matter of minutes, he had created a perfectly woven flower crown, white and yellow and orange and _lovely_.

Once finished, Link looked over at her, catching her eyes with his own serious gaze. He turned slightly to face her, and, without preamble, set the flower crown delicately on Zelda’s head. As he retreated, he tucked a strand of stray hair behind her ear, almost unconsciously, a little smile on his lips.

_He’s so strange,_ Zelda thought. She reached up to touch the crown, her fingers brushing against smooth petals and intricate weaving. _Robbie would like this._

“Oh!” Zelda exclaimed. She shut her journal, shoving it into her basket. “You _have_ to teach me how to make one of these.”

Link raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve never made one before, and I think Robbie would really love one. I still owe him an apology after…” Zelda trailed off.How was she supposed to say, _I still owe him an apology after you allegedly got so worried about me you destroyed his nightshade garden? “_ Anyway. Teach me?”

Link looked at her for a while in that searching way of his, before nodding. He picked up two flowers from his perfectly organized rows and handed them to her, before choosing two more for himself.

“Just watch me,” he said softly. “It’s easy.”

Zelda mimicked his movements, noting how he wove much slower than he had before just so she could follow along. They worked in silence; the only sounds beside the nature surrounding them were Zelda’s exclamations of annoyance and Link’s quiet laughter. It took a while for her to fall into a rhythm, but once she did, she Zelda got a decent way through in not so much time at all, though she was still much slower than Link was when she watched him the first time. Even after she got the hang of it Link still worked at her pace, waiting until she had successfully tied off another flower to move on himself.

“So,” Zelda said conversationally, picking a little dandelion to be her next flower. “Who taught you how to make these?”

Link paused halfway through tying off a daisy. A faraway look drifted across his face as he looked down at the half-finished crown in his lap. He didn’t respond; instead, it seemed as if he shut down, much like when she asked him about his silence in the barn yesterday.

_Another hard question,_ Zelda thought. _I wonder what his past was like._

“Link?” she said gently, trying to bring his focus back

Though her voice was gentle, he flinched at the sound, and swallowed. Didn’t meet her gaze; instead rubbed at the back of his neck and looked up to the sky. When he spoke, his voice was heavy: “A friend.”

“A friend taught you?” Zelda was instantly curious. She knew nothing of Link’s background, and she desperately wanted to learn more, her appetite for knowledge as ravenous as always.

Link twirled one of the flowers between his fingers, watching the sunlight catch the petals, his mouth a thin line. “You…remind me of her, sometimes,” he said, in that quiet, soft voice of his.

_Her?_

“What was her name?”

Some kind of hard, powerful emotion flickered in his eyes, his hands shifting in his lap. “I don’t-”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Zelda said immediately, cutting Link off. She recognized the look on his face, and if anyone understood not wanting to talk about something, she did. If he wanted to talk about whatever _that_ was, he could do it on his own time. “We can just finish these up. How do you tie the ends together?”

Link stared at her for a beat, surprised.

Zelda looked back, trying to understand his expression, trying to make that pained look go away. “I’m serious. I have no idea how to tie these together without the whole thing falling apart. I can tie off a stitch, but it turns out flower stems are quite a bit thicker than embroidery thread.” She shrugged cartoonishly. “Who knew?”

At that, Link smiled. It was a little smile, just a tug at one side of his mouth, but it was there. The tense line that had returned to his shoulders faded away, and he leaned in a little closer to her so she could watch him demonstrate. It took her a few tries to get it right, but Link patiently untied his own knot to show her as many times as she needed.

Zelda smiled, lifting her finished crown. It wasn’t nearly as well-made as the one she wore on her head, but it was still _something._ She chose mainly white flowers with a few yellows scattered in between, and though it wasn’t very full and lustrous, it still looked rather nice, in Zelda’s opinion.

“Here. Since you taught me how to make it, you can have the honor of wearing my first crown. I’ll make a better one for Robbie later.”

That flicker of amusement came back to Link’s blue eyes, and Zelda smiled wider, despite herself. She gestured for him to lean closer; he bowed his head ever so slightly so she could set the crown gently in his messy hair. She could feel his gaze on her as she did it, and when she pulled away, her fingertips brushed along his cheekbone on accident. His eyes darted to her hand for a second before returning to her face. The soft white flowers stuck out pleasantly from his golden, sunspot hair, and his eyes seemed infinitely more blue.

“Now we match,” Link said, a teasing note in his voice. His face was closer to hers than she remembered, mirth in his eyes. “How do I look?”

It was then, as she opened her mouth to respond, that she saw it. The faintest flash of green, the hint of orange feet through the flowers. She couldn’t help herself; she let out an excited shriek and lunged past Link after it, leaving his question unanswered in a flurry of skirts. She just barely managed to wrap her fingers around cold, slippery skin: _she had caught a frog._

Zelda whipped around on her knees to find Link staring at her in shock.

“I _caught_ one,” she whispered, awestruck. “I don’t believe it.” She had the little creature hidden away in her hands; she knew Link couldn’t see what it was, but he was leaning forward curiously, trying to see.

“You know…” Zelda said slyly, a devious idea forming in her head. “They’re actually a delicacy here.”

He blinked at her, then at her hands.

“Oh, yes! Under the proper circumstances, it’s believed they’ll augment your abilities.”

His eyes widened.

Zelda leaned forward slightly, holding out her cupped hands, still concealing the frog. She spoke in a dramatic, hushed tone to enhance the effect. “You know, we’re in the perfect testing space right here, and with your level of physical fitness…” (Link raised his eyebrows, but Zelda ignored him. She must remain perfectly serious.) “You’d be the perfect candidate!”

Finally, she opened her hands, revealing the little frog. It blinked up at them with huge yellow eyes; Link furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Taste it!” Zelda exclaimed. She was already laughing by the time she thrust the frog at him, laughing even harder when Link recoiled in surprise.The frog, wanting no part in her little prank, immediately tried to leap to freedom, but Zelda shoved the frog right in Link’s face as it began to jump, and she practically threw it at his head. The frog scrambled frantically over his nose and chin, nearly stepping right in Link’s eye, and Zelda was laughing so hard her eyes were tearing up and her sides felt like they would split right open.

She hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.

Link swiftly extracted the frog from his hair, cupping in his hands much like Zelda had done moments prior. If she hadn’t been so distracted, she would’ve seen the way he looked at her; not only with that amused glimmer in his eyes but with a kind of soft, lingering smile reserved only for precious moments that stuck firmly in the mind. But Zelda’s laughter blurred her vision and fogged her acute observational skills, so she saw nothing at all until the snickers faded.

“Oh, that _hurt,_ ” Zelda wheezed, clutching her sides.

Link held out the frog to her; somehow, he had managed to keep hold of it, but, to Zelda’s horror, he made the move to release it back to the wild marsh grass.

“No!” Zelda exclaimed. “Don’t you _dare_ let it go! I need to sketch it in my journal.”

Link returned the frog to the cage of his fingers. If frogs could sigh, this one would. The poor, bemused creature stared at its captors; it seemed resigned to the fact it might never escape.

Adjusting his posture so he was sitting cross-legged, Link held the frog out to Zelda, making high walls with the palms of his hands so the frog sat snug and trapped within his fingers.

Zelda, wide-eyed and smiling, scooted closer so she could see the frog in the greatest detail, barely noticing when her knees brushed against Link’s. She flipped to a new page in her journal, past her unfinished sparrow drawing, and began to capture the image of the frog tucked away in Link’s hands with great vigor.

If a you, a stranger, were to walk into the marsh and stumble upon the sight of them, you might think the two were forest spirits concocting some sort of plan; they sat with their flowered heads bowed together as if whispering secrets, covered in dirt and grass and sunlight with flushed, excited faces and wild hair. They weren’t spirits, however; they were a scholar and a farm boy, one bent over a frog and her journal, the other watching the first as she sketched (and perhaps watching way she crinkled her brow and chewed on her pencil when she concentrated, but you, the stranger, would hardly be able to tell that).

Later that night, once Zelda had returned to her room clean and showered, her crown removed and on her desk, she opened her journal again. Between the page where she had doodled flowers in the meadow before getting distracted, and the sketch of the frog cupped in a pair of calloused palms, she tucked one of the flowers. It was a lovely white one, the same kind as the ones in the crown she made for Link. She smiled softly, and closed her journal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was so much fun to write!!
> 
> Leave a comment and a kudos if you liked it; I'd love to know what you all think. 
> 
> Someone new will be introduced next chapter....I'm very excited...


	7. spoiled honey on the tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which a newcomer arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter has a scene that might be uncomfortable for some readers, with some non-consensual content (it is not between Link and Zelda, for those who are concerned) If you don't want to read it, go from the line "cows do have feelings" past the break, to "Zelda nearly leapt out of her skin". I'll explain what happens in the end notes so I don't spoil anything here. Please read at your own discretion!

_August 2_ _ nd _ __

_I daresay Link and I are proper friends now. Friends. Imagine that. For so long I’ve only had Impa, and Purah, and the rest of the staff…It’s rather nice to have someone new. It’s strange to even think it, especially after that awful start we had. He’s…easy to be around, if that can be believed. Despite it all._

_It’s confusing, isn’t it? I’ve resorted to making a list to keep my mind straight. When he’s around, my brain gets all tangled up and I forget that I want to figure him out at all. He’s absolutely baffling…but he’s not so hard to read if I pay enough attention. Hence the list. I’ve written down all of the little quirks and tics I’ve observed, down to the twitch of his eyebrows when he’s confused to the way his mouth moves when he’s trying not to laugh._

_Impa caught me once while writing my list. She got a look on her face that I didn’t bother to unpack. I told her it’s simply observation, but she laughed at me and went back to stripping my bed._

_You know, trying to figure out Link is like learning a new language._

_I wonder if I shall ever be fluent._

The weeks flew by quickly. They usually flew by quickly when her father wasn’t around, but these few weeks went by faster than she expected. Zelda knew why, of course; all the variables were the same except for one.

_August 8_ _ th _ __

_Today was lovely. I’ve become familiar with much of the swamp at this point, except the forest. I believe my flower is there. I told Link about my mystery flower a few days ago, and he reassured me it will be found at all costs. Today, we went searching along the riverbank, our eyes peeled for white and blue, but alas, we didn’t find it. I did catch another frog, though! This one was much faster than the last one, and I nearly leapt right in the river. Link caught me before I fell in._

At night, Zelda stared at her ceiling, Terrako heavy on her stomach, and thought. The world felt so simple and so complex at the same time. She had trouble wrapping her head around it. She flipped through her journal and stopped when she found the flower tucked in the fold of the book, soft and white between doodles of a meadow and a drawing of familiar hands holding a frog.

_August 12_ _ th _ __

_Anju has made another escape attempt, this one more daring than any other. Somehow, she managed to sneak past Link (a feat in it of itself) and got herself stuck on top of the manor roof. I do not know how. All I know is I was sitting at my desk sketching when Link appeared at my window - my second floor window, mind you - and frightened me half to death! Wouldn’t you believe it, he was_ _climbing the side of the house_ _to rescue Anju. I literally cannot fathom how he did that, or how he got down. By the time I ran out to the front yard he was already back by the coop, Anju safe (and disgruntled) in his arms. I couldn’t even form a sentence, and he just laughed at my bemusement and went back to cleaning the coop._

When Zelda’s mind wandered, she happened to wonder about him. She wanted to know his favorite food, and if he liked books or not. She felt he would enjoy _David Copperfield._

_August 18_ _ th _ __

_Can you believe Father has been gone for nearly three weeks? He left on the 24_ _ th _ _of July. He’s been gone this long before, of course, but this time it’s different. A lot is different, I’m afraid. I think I -_

BANG BANG BANG.

Zelda started, nearly flinging her pen across the room. It bounced across her desk before tumbling to the hardwood floor, skittering toward Terrako’s basket. The one-eyed cat contemplated the pen with mild interest, debating whether batting the pen a few times was worth the trouble of getting up. He didn’t have to make the decision, though: Zelda rescued her pen before he could pounce.

Her door, assaulted yet again: BANG BANG BANG BANG.

“Miss Zelda!”

“You’re going to _break_ it, Purah,” Zelda said drily, opening her abused door to a panting Purah. “You could’ve just opened it.”

Purah brushed her bangs out of her face. “As a servant, I’m not supposed to open doors without knocking first,” she said, sarcasm thick in her voice despite how out of breath she was. She took a deep breath. “Thank the gods you’re here instead of the marsh.”

“I was going to leave in-“

“ _No_.” Purah straightened. “Your father. He’s here, he came back early. Robbie spotted his carriage down the road while in the garden. He’ll be here in a matter of minutes.”

“ _Minutes?”_ Zelda shrieked. “Purah, I’m _barely_ presentable!”

Purah shrugged. “Well, you better _get_ presentable. Here, I’ll find a dress, you do your hair. And don’t forget stockings, or Master Bosphoramus will have your head.”

Zelda rolled her eyes. “When doesn’t he?” She muttered, but started braiding immediately.

A few frenzied, rushed minutes turned Zelda into a presentable woman; Purah picked out a soft, straight dress made of a lovely cream fabric, embroidered with roses and looping vines at the hem with a matching shawl placed over her shoulders. Purah fetched a white silk ribbon to tie around Zelda’s waist, and made sure no hairs were out of place before sending Zelda down the stairs with little more than a slap on the rear and a “good luck, ma’dam!”

Zelda, still giggling, met Impa in the entrance hall.

“Is he here yet?”

“Just about, Miss Zelda. You look very proper.”

“Oh, thank you. Purah chose the dress.”

“She did surprisingly well, then. Are you wearing shoes?”

Zelda proudly lifted her hem to show off her feet. “And stockings.”

Impa raised her brows. “I’m impressed, Miss Zelda.”

“It’s good to hear I’m not entirely hopeless!” Zelda said with a laugh.

A little smirk played at Impa’s lips as they walked out to the porch, the rumble of wheels on the horizon. “I’m sure Link can assuade you if you ever do feel hopeless, Miss Zelda.”

Zelda blinked. “What?”

“Oh, look, the carriage.”

Sure enough, her father’s carriage had pulled through the gate, Robbie closing and locking it after it passed. The horses whinnied, and Zelda wondered if they were excited to be home.

Link immediately materialized from nowhere to unhook the horses, and Zelda watched him whisper to them and scratch their chins as he unstrapped the bridles.

“Miss Zelda, do focus,” Impa muttered, and Zelda snapped to attention as her father emerged from the carriage.

Rhoam Bosphoramus looked to be in a rare good mood. He smiled at Zelda as he stepped out, a smile she hadn’t seen for a long time. That smile made it seem like he was the same as before, like her mother hadn’t died at all.

Zelda stepped forward to greet her father, even daring to open her arms for a hug. But she stopped dead in her tracks as a second figure stepped out of the carriage, a man so big he nearly blocked out the sun.

He was tall, _very_ tall, with dark skin and a broad chest. He stepped down next to Zelda’s father, and his huge, shiny black boots kicked up dust when they hit the dirt ground. Her father was not short, but this man practically eclipsed him. He brushed dust from his neat, tidy trousers, a glittering gold watch on his wrist catching the sun. He wore an outfit that looked extremely expensive: a dark blue patterned waistcoat embellished with gold trim fit snugly over a white, silk shirt with billowing sleeves cinched at the wrists. The chain of a pocket watch sat bright gold against the blue fabric. A silk cravat sat neatly at his throat, and he held a black tailcoat over one arm, all expensive wool and golden buttons.

Zelda did not notice all of this finery at first. No, the first thing she noticed was his hair.

Long, uncommonly long, and uncommonly _red_ , the man wore it neatly tied back from his face with a piece of ribbon. His thick eyebrows, well-trimmed sideburns and goatee were the same startling hue, complementing intense amber eyes that were trained on Zelda from the moment he left the carriage. He flashed her a white-toothed smile, a crooked one, but not pleasantly crooked like Link’s.

“Zelda.” Her father’s voice was scathing, and brought her back to earth. “Staring is not becoming of a woman.”

Zelda’s face flushed, and she felt silly. After a month away, the first thing he says to her is just another criticism.Of course it would all be the same. She looked at the ground, cursing her stupid observational habits.

To her surprise, she heard the stranger laugh, a rumbling, full-bodied laugh. “Ah, Rhoam,” he said, his voice hinting of an unfamiliar accent, “don’t look down on your lovely daughter too much. I don’t suppose she’s seen many people like me before.” He winked at Zelda. “I’m one of a kind.”

The roguish smile on his face, though playful, held something else that Zelda couldn’t place. It made her uncomfortable.

She shuddered.

“Zelda, have you forgotten _all_ your manners?”

“I’m sorry, Father.” Zelda gathered her skirts and curtseyed as gracefully as she could. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Her father scoffed, her attempt at grace surely pathetic in his eyes, but the stranger smiled even wider. He bowed his head.

“Sir Ganondorf, at your service. The pleasure is all mine.”

_Ganondorf. What a peculiar name._

Zelda straightened, and jumped. Sir Ganondorf had caught her hand when she dropped her skirts, and he brushed his lips against her knuckles. His facial hair felt rough on her skin. Zelda tried not to flinch away, repressing the urge to yank her hand back to safety for fear of her father’s disappointment. She could see Link by the coop in the corner of her vision; he had returned from putting away the horses and had his focus on the chickens. She wondered if he was listening.

“Sir Ganondorf and I met in the town I was doing business in,” her father said suddenly. She looked at him. “I spoke of you, and he was…intrigued.” He chuckled, as if he could hardly believe someone would be interested in _her._ She tried to ignore the dark, sick feeling in her stomach as her father continued.

“In any case, Sir Ganondorf asked to come back to Castletown with me to meet you, and see if he liked the area.”

A sense of dread began to loom in Zelda’s mind.

“So far the view has been nothing short of excellent,” Sir Ganondorf said lowly, eyes still on Zelda.

_Oh my gods._

Zelda carefully extracted her hand from Sir Ganondorf’s larger one, a plastering a painfully fake smile on her face despite the panic raging in her chest. “It’ll be a delight to have you here,” she managed.

Sir Ganondorf’s shiny white teeth flashed again. “Miss Zelda,” he said sincerely, “I expect to be thoroughly delighted.

Zelda shot a look at her father. He looked entirely pleased, bordering on _proud._ She couldn’t remember the last time he looked at her like that, and her suspicions became truth in her mind.

Her father clapped his hands, smiling wide. “Well, Sir Ganondorf, now that you’ve met my daughter, how about I show you where you’ll stay?”

Sir Ganondorf straightened, looming tall over both Zelda and her father. He smiled charmingly, but to Zelda it felt predatory. “Lead the way, my friend.”

Rhoam slapped Sir Ganondorf on the back in a friendly, if overly masculine, way with a chuckle before leading him inside, Purah holding the door. As they walked in, Purah shot Zelda a wide-eyed, questioning look.

Zelda grimaced and nodded.

Purah puffed out her cheeks and exhaled slowly, before following the two men inside.

Link approached, silent as a ghost. He stood next to her, facing the manor, and Zelda noticed absently that he smelled like dirt, and horse.

“Hi,” Zelda said softly.

“Hello.”

“Did you see him?”

“It was hard not to.”

Zelda turned to Link. Her heart was beating fast in her chest. “Father’s going to tell me to marry him.”

Link said nothing. He only sighed.

For the next few days, Zelda felt entirely on edge. Sir Ganondorf seemed to be around every corner, full of white-toothed smiles and sickening charm. He constantly caught her in the halls, forcing her into overly polite conversation where she had to pretend to giggle with her mouth covered like a lady, and stand with her back perfectly straight. She was running out of excuses to escape, and her longing for the quiet joys of the marsh had never been stronger.

Sir Ganondorfhad been staying in one of the lower rooms that Impa and Purah converted into a little guest room, and he frequently spotted Zelda walking down the stairs. Usually he asked about her day, standing too close and touching her arm. He would compliment her: on her hair, on her dress, on her figure:

“You could outshine the sun itself, Miss Zelda.”

“That dress looks particularly ravishing on you, Miss Zelda.”

“I do love it when you put your hair up like that, Miss Zelda.”

Zelda hated it. But it was manageable. If she stayed in her room most of the time, she avoided the brunt of his affections, though Impa said it irritated her father. Sometimes she would see Link through her window and he would wave at her.

She did this every day for three days since _he_ arrived. She spent most of her time sketching or writing, letting her mind wander to the imaginary marsh in her mind, replaying memories like records to fill her spare time. On the afternoon of the fourth day, she received a knock at her door.

Zelda sighed, putting down her pencil. She had been sketching a rather nice picture of Impa. “Do you think it’s him, Terrako?” she asked, standing up. The cat blinked at her and yawned.

“Perhaps he’s decided to be indecent enough to come straight to my room. With more flowers, no doubt. Poor Robbie’s garden will be destroyed at this rate, and I fear I will never forgive myself for it.”

Zelda steeled herself, straightening her back, and opened the door, prepared to face Sir Ganondorf head on _yet again_.

But it was Link.

“Oh, thank the _gods_ it’s you,” Zelda wheezed, immediately dropping her perfect posture.

Link raised a brow, a little smile tugging at his lips.

Zelda rolled her eyes. “Shut up. I was worried it might be Sir Ganondorf again with some new creepy thing to tell me.”

“Do you think every man you meet is creepy?”

“What?”

Link leaned against the doorframe. “You thought I was creepy when we first met.”

“You _were_ creepy when we first met,” Zelda said drily. “How would you feel if some stranger started following you everywhere and refused to talk to you?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps he was just shy.”

“Or creepy!” Zelda returned to her desk, dropping into her chair in a perfectly unladylike manner. “Do you need something?”

Link remained in the doorway, clearly not planning on entering her room. He didn’t even look around; his gaze stayed on Zelda. He didn’t speak. He just watched her for a bit, his work for the day evident in the state of his clothes and his hair. He always seemed to have hay and feathers somewhere on his person.

Zelda huffed. “I’m not a mind reader, Link. And I don’t have all day.” She rolled her eyes when he chuckled at her impatience.

“Will you come back outside?” Link asked, his voice soft. “Romani misses you.”

“ _Romani_ is a cow.”

“Cows have feelings, too.” Link paused. “Even if they don’t show it.”

_What a funny thing to say,_ Zelda thought.

“Well. Fine. If Romani misses me so much I must visit her,” Zelda proclaimed (not missing the way Link’s face brightened). “ _But,_ I have one condition.”

Link raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“You must protect me from Sir Ganondorf. If he is coming, you must hide me. I do _not_ want to speak with him any longer than I have to.”

“Your wish is my command, my lady,” Link said, smiling.

Zelda groaned. “Do _not_ call me that.”

“What would you prefer I call you, then, Miss Zelda?”

“'Miss Zelda' will do. I’m no lady, or princess, or anything like that.”

Link smirked. “You could be a princess. You’re plenty bossy.”

“I am _not_ bossy.”

He chuckled. “You are.”

“Well, if I _were_ to be a princess, then I suppose you would be my knight,” Zelda said thoughtfully. “And knights never talk back to their princesses. It’s entirely improper.”

Link smiled that crooked, boyish smile of his. “Well, excuse me, princess.”

And that made her laugh, long and hard. The last time she’d laughed like this, it was Link’s doing, too. She glanced up at him, grinning, and he smiled back, and something warm blossomed in her chest, like a flower opening to the sun.

They managed to avoid Sir Ganondorf, though it took Link hiding Zelda in the servant’s closet to do so. They laughed at their own teenage foolishness all the way out to the barn, and Zelda gave Romani a hug when she saw her. The little calf _did_ seem happy to see her. Maybe Link was right, and cows do have feelings after all.

Six days after his arrival, it happened.

He cornered her by the kitchen, spotting her as she descended the stairs for an after-dinner snack.

“Miss Zelda, you’re looking especially radiant tonight.” Sir Ganondorf snatched her hand and brushed a kiss to her knuckles.

“Oh…thank you, Sir Ganondorf.” Zelda smiled uneasily.

He leaned closer to her, his size making her feel like she was trapped against the wall. His grip on her hand didn’t waver, the smell of his cologne strong and dizzying.

“Come now, don’t you have anything complementary to say about me?” he said, voice quiet. He brought his other hand to her arm, his thumb pressing into her skin through the fabric. “I give you compliments all the time, but you never say anything back.”

“I…well….you’re wearing a nice waistcoat.”

Sir Ganondorf chuckled lowly. “Am I?”

“Y-yes!” Zelda squeaked. He was way too close, and only getting closer. His hand slid down her arm, slow. “It’s very…sparkly.”

“Why, thank you. You know, Miss Zelda,” he said, her name dropping off his tongue like spoiled honey, “I’m rich. I could buy you sparkly things as well.”

Sir Ganondorf smiled, but it was the opposite of comforting. He finally dropped Zelda’s hand, but he was bent over her, so close his broad shoulders blocked the light from the hall and doused Zelda in shadow. She pressed her back further into the wall but there was a table behind her digging into her hips, and she had nowhere to go. His hands were drifting; it felt like an electric shock when his fingers grabbed the fabric at her outer thigh.

“Do you like sparkly things?” he muttered. His eyes glowed like fire but Zelda felt cold, and as he leaned in to press a burning kiss to her cheek, his sideburns scratched on her skin and her heart felt like it was about to explode.

“Sir Ganondorf, I don’t-“

He pulled back, and his face was _so close_ to hers and she could smell the brandy on his breath, it was her father’s favorite that he liked to drink after a meal. His burning eyes searched her face before dropping lower, then meeting her terrified gaze, and he smiled like a predator that just caught the tastiest prey.

"I'll buy you whatever you want."

His hand twitched at her thigh and she felt like screaming, but she couldn't, she was perfectly, entirely frozen and the world spun fast and violent around her and it smelled like brandy and expensive cologne.

And then.

“Miss Zelda?”

Zelda nearly leapt out of her skin. Link had come from the kitchen door beside her, softly brushing his fingers against her forearm.

Sir Ganondorf took a step back, looking just as surprised as Zelda felt. She turning to Link slowly, like her head was dead weight, and there was a feeling in her stomach like kerosine and turpentine.

“Link?” Her voice was shaking. She could hear it.

Link studied her for a second. His eyes flitted across her face, and she wondered how much he had just seen

“Will you assist me with something?” he asked, his voice painstakingly gentle but full of meaning all at the same time.

Zelda could hardly find her voice to speak. She felt dizzy, like a live wire, like someone had nailed her feet to the floor. She nodded, jerkily: she wanted to be anywhere but right here, with that man standing beside her.

“I didn’t realize servants were allowed to call on their employers in such a way,” Sir Ganondorf said coldly, and Zelda flinched at his voice.

Link eyed Sir Ganondorf, his expression unreadable. He didn’t bow, or make any move to introduce himself. Of course, he said nothing, but he had steel in his gaze.

“Well. You’re a rude little thing,” Sir Ganondorf scoffed.

Zelda saw Link’s eyebrow twitch, and his gaze ventured into a glare.

_I guess he doesn’t like to be called little,_ Zelda thought. It was then she noticed his hand was still at her arm, and he had yet to move it.

“If I hadn’t just heard you speak to the lovely Miss Zelda I might think you were some kind of mute,” Sir Ganondorf continued. “Now, the lady and I are quite busy. I’m sure whatever you have can wait, can’t it?”

“Link,” Zelda whispered weakly, and he pressed his fingers into her forearm, not hard. Just a reminder that he was there.

“It can’t wait.” Link said sharply. “If you’ll excuse us, _Sir_ Ganondorf.” Then, he turned on his heel, his hand wrapped gently around Zelda’s wrist, and tugged her away into the kitchen.

Zelda wordlessly followed, a leaf in the wind, and as she glanced behind her through the swinging door she caught a glimpse of Sir Ganondorf’s face, red with fury. Then the door slammed shut, and she was on the back porch.

Zelda vaguely registered Link telling her to sit down, and she vaguely registered actually sitting. She felt a little numb; she could still feel Sir Ganondorf’s kiss like a brand on her cheek, feel the ghost of his hands.

“Miss Zelda,” Link said gently, his soft voice bringing her back to reality. He was kneeling on the grass in front of her. “You’re shaking.”

“Oh? Am I?” Zelda’s own voice sounded a thousand miles away.

“I’m sorry I touched you without asking.”

Zelda blinked. “What?”

“I pulled you away by the wrist.”

“Oh. I didn’t…it’s okay.” Zelda rubbed at her arm.

Link studied her before looking away. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay,” she murmured.

“It’s not.” Link said it so suddenly and firmly that she jumped. “You deserve to be treated with respect.”

Zelda pursed her lips. She didn’t know what to say; she had never been in this situation before. What would’ve happened if Link hadn’t been there? What would her father have wanted her to do?

She decided she didn’t want to think about that.

Zelda sighed. She reached out, touching Link’s shoulder. He started, looking at her. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “You’re a knight in shining armor.”

Link quirked a brow, eyeing his clothes skeptically. He wore his usual outfit: tan shirt, dirty trousers, boots. “‘Shining’ might be an overstatement, Miss Zelda,” he said drily.

Zelda smiled, and laughed, and suddenly she was crying. It felt like a dam burst in her soul, and the tears flew fast and hard, leaving her near breathless. Her tears caught on her lashes and blurred her vision. She was trembling; she could feel it, her breath caught thick in her throat.

She rubbed furiously at her eyes. She didn’t want to cry in front of Link, and _ugh,_ there he was, staring at her with eyes wide and concerned and he had his hands raised hesitantly toward her, and he was speaking something she couldn’t hear over the blood roaring in her ears. The reality had hit her and her skin felt aflame everywhere he had touched her, everywhere he _would’ve._

Link’s voice. “Can I-“

“ _Please._ ” She didn’t even know what he was asking, but she collapsed into his front and sobbed into his chest, her body wracked with painful, choking, shuddering sobs. After a moment, she felt one of his hands tracing soothing circles into her back, his other steady but gentle at her side.

“I’m s-sorry,” she gasped, clutching at the fabric of his shirt. “I don’t…I just- I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be sorry,” Link muttered into her hair. “We all cry.”

“He-“

“Is a terrible person and I will not let him touch you ever again.”

With that kind of iron certainty in his voice, gods, Zelda _had_ to believe him. She curled her fists into his shirt and tried to match her breath to the beat of his steady heart. There was nothing more she could do, not now.

And they stayed like that, for a while. If Link’s knees got sore, he never complained. If his arm got tired from drawing circles on Zelda’s back, well, he didn’t stop. He only pulled away long after Zelda stopped crying, when her breath returned to normal, and she stopped whispering shaky apologies into his shirt.

“Hello,” Link said softly, once he pulled back. He swiped below her eye with the pad of his thumb, brushing away the damp ghost of her tears. When his hands fell away, Zelda’s cheeks felt cold. But they were still close, close enough that when Link breathed Zelda could feel the ghost of his breath on her skin if she paid attention. But it was okay. She would be okay.

“Hi,” Zelda whispered back.

“You know, I’ll fight him,” Link offered, and, unexpectedly, Zelda laughed. Despite it all.

“No, no, he’s so big,” Zelda giggled. “He’ll crush you.”

A smile played at Link’s lips. He shrugged offhandedly. “I’m fast. And athletic. What does _he_ have besides biceps?”

“Don’t fight him, Link. My father will fire you.”

_Gods. We shouldn’t be joking about this._

Link chuckled. “We can’t have that. We still haven’t found your flower.”

“Hmm, no,” Zelda hummed. “We haven’t.”

Later that night, after Zelda assured Link she would be okay and was handed off to Impa, her father called her to his office.

Impa went with her, and stood just out of sight around the corner. A silent, comforting support.

Zelda knocked on the door.

Her father opened it. He didn’t invite her in.

“You insulted Sir Ganondorf today with your actions.”

Zelda said nothing. She had no words to say.

“You’re lucky a suitor came at all. It’s been eighteen years and no man has shown a remote interest in you.” Her father sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair. “He’s a foreigner, yes, but we should count our blessings. He’s charming enough, and rich to the boot. Did you hear that, Zelda? He’s rich.”

Zelda flinched. “I know, Father.”

“Well, if you _knew_ , I don’t think you’d be acting this foolishly. Locking yourself in your room every day.” He scoffed. “I’d expect more of a proper lady. And more of my daughter.”

Rhoam Bosphoramus looked Zelda up and down. Perhaps if he were a more attentive father, he would’ve noticed the way she clutched at her arms to prevent herself from shaking. Perhaps he would’ve noticed one of his servants lurking in the hallway. Perhaps he would’ve noticed the not-quite farmhand listening at the window.

But he didn’t notice any of this.

“Zelda,” he said, and his voice felt colder and sterner than it had ever been. “If that man proposes to you, you’d best say the right thing.”

Then he shut the door. He didn’t slam it in her face, or close it with any great force at all. He simply shut it, and Zelda fell to her knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the scene I mentioned before, this is what happens: Sir Ganondorf, while drunk, harasses Zelda in the hallway and kisses her cheek, putting his hand on her outer thigh. Link interrupts this before anything else happens. 
> 
> HELLO EVERYONE! I'm here! I know it's been quite some time since an update, and I thank you all for staying so patient with me. This chapter was a little rushed because of it, so I'm sorry if it sucks! As always, leave a kudos if you enjoyed it and please let me know what you think! I absolutely love hearing from you guys, you make my world go round. 
> 
> I promise things won't be sad forever. 
> 
> PS: I actually had a whole scene written out where Link shoves Zelda in the closet, but I cut it...maybe someday I'll post it in an extra.


	8. one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a sleepless night, and the fallout

_August 26_ _ th _

_I did not sleep last night. It feels foolish to put into words, but I’m afraid if I close my eyes I will relive it all again. After I spoke with Father I had to walk up the stairs, past_ **_his_ ** _room, and I couldn’t do it. I turned that corner and faced that spot in the hall, and it felt like…I don’t know what it felt like. Suffocating, maybe. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t walk up those stupid stairs and know he’s there behind that door at the bottom._

_I spent all night in the barn. By the time Link found me in the morning my gown was wrinkled and I was covered in cow hair and hay and tears but he didn’t say anything at all. He just helped me up, told me to wait. In a few minutes he returned with Impa, who had a clean dress and food from the kitchen, and he left us alone in the barn to talk. I told her everything and it felt so much worse to say now, because telling someone else made it so real. Yesterday I felt as if I were in a dream, and I just had to wake up in my bed with Terrako at my feet._

_I feel as if I have done nothing but disappoint. I can’t do anything right. I can’t marry that man as my father as asked. I can’t be my mother for him. I can’t be perfect. I can’t even walk to my bedroom._

_I just want to be worth something._

She stayed in the barn that morning, knees drawn up to her chest. Long after she finished talking to Impa, long after Link had come back to start his chores. He let her be - didn’t pry, didn’t push, didn’t prod. She watched him milk the cows and her body felt numb.

Sometimes Link looked over at her as he worked, his big blue eyes searching her face. Zelda wondered what he saw: her hair, messy, strewn with hay, unbraided and wild down her back and over her shoulders, her nails bitten to the quick and ragged around the edges. Could you get bags under your eyes after just one sleepless night? She felt as if she had been awake for a hundred years.

He came over after he finished, two buckets of frothy white milk at his sides. He set them down on the barn floor and crouched in front of her. Not too close, Zelda noticed.

“Hello,” he said, in his soft, velvet honey voice.

“Hi.” Her own voice sounded hollow, small.

“Do you want me to take this back?” He gestured to her breakfast plate, completely untouched.

She nodded.

He reached for the plate slowly, as if she was a frightened, wild animal he didn’t want to startle. Part of the gesture irritated her and made her feel like a china doll, all fragile porcelain and painted features, but the other part of her _felt_ entirely, unfathomably breakable. Or perhaps already broken, held together at the seams by glue and paste, moments away from falling apart.

Link made the move to stand, reaching for the milk buckets with the plate balanced precariously at his elbow, but Zelda found herself reaching out, grabbing at his wrist. He froze, gaze questioning, the plate threatening to topple to the ground.

“Stay,” Zelda whispered, voice quivering despite her best efforts. “ _Please_.”

He said nothing, but his eyes softened at her words. He set the plate atop one of the buckets and slid down the barn wall, sitting cross-legged beside her. His hair was messier today, Zelda noted. He looked tired.

Zelda breathed a sigh, letting her lungs scream for air before drawing another breath. Romani snuffled through the food trough with the other cows. The cracks in the barn ceiling filtered in the soft morning light, painting broad streaks across the floor. Little particles of dust danced in the rays, waltzing with each other in their perfect, microscopic world. If she listened hard enough she imagined she could hear everyone in the manor going about their mornings: Stamm in the kitchen, cooking breakfast with Moza’s questionable assistance. Impa bustling about changing sheets and towels, Purah cleaning the windows and dusting the floors. Robbie, already covered in dirt despite the time, arm deep in his gardens.

Her father in his study, drinking coffee with a splash of brandy.

Sir Ganondorf.

Zelda’s breath caught in her throat and her arms tightened unconsciously around her knees. Her vision blurred, so she closed her eyes, dropping her head before the tears could come.

She didn’t understand what was wrong with her. Nothing had happened, nothing serious. Link had stopped him before it came to that.

Yet, she still felt his lips on her cheek, his hands on her body, the smell of booze on his breath sharp and foul in her nostrils. Her intrusive thoughts prickled at the back of her mind, whispering what would’ve happened if Link hadn’t shown up, and she couldn’t figure out how to shut them up. Her skin prickled like her whole body fell asleep, all pins and needles and dull, numbing pain.

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. She didn’t know if she meant it for Link, or whether she simply needed to say the words aloud.

Link hummed, quiet and thoughtful. She could feel his body heat close to hers, and she couldn’t tell if it was comforting or not. Her thoughts on him toed a line she couldn’t place: some days he took up space her mind as naturally as breathing, and it scared her.

“What do you do when you don’t know what to do?”

Link quirked a brow at her. “What was that?”

She glowered at him, but the heavy feeling in her chest lifted, if only a little. She repeated her question, slower this time.

He hummed again, watching Romani and Cremia nuzzle each other as he mulled over his thoughts. “I suppose I do something about it.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, his big blue irises flashing in the soft light. “I’m better with actions than I am with words.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“Do you mind?”

“What?”

Link shifted slightly to face her. “Do you mind that I’m so quiet?”

Zelda contemplated this, propping her chin on her arms where they sat folded on her knees. “In the beginning, I did. I thought you were rather irritating” - Link chuckled - “and that you simply refused to talk to me. But I guess I got to know you a little more, and I realized you speak in different ways. Your eyes, and your facial expressions, and the way you react to things. It’s just a different language than mine.” She was rambling, and Link was letting her. “I’m good at observing, though. I can read you better now. I was foolish for assuming you were as emotionless as I thought you were.”

“You thought I was emotionless?” Link sounded surprised.

“Yes. You never talked to me. How was I supposed to know?” Zelda said, surprised herself at the teasing tone in her voice. “But you just show emotion differently than I’m used to. But I learned.”

It was true. Her father showed emotion with his words and his voice. If he was disappointed, you would know it by the way he spoke to you. Robbie declared his emotions proudly, wearing them like clothes, as did Purah. Impa tested Zelda’s observational skills in the very beginning when they met; she was similar to Link in the subtleness of her emotions, but she proclaimed her anger and her joy quickly.

But with Link, it took time. She had to learn his little quirks: how his mouth twitched when he found something funny, the slight draw of his brows when he was confused. The way he picked at his nails or toyed with a piece of hay when he was restless and didn’t have his whittling knife on him. He tensed when he was nervous, coiled like a spring, but when relaxed he moved easy and lazy like a cat in the sun. When he was happy, his eyes would sparkle like the sun on the sea, though you wouldn’t recognize it right away, and when he was angry, they’d darken, like storm clouds. The way they did when he pulled her away from Sir Ganondorf.

The name dropped like a stone into water in Zelda’s head, sending little ripples through her mind. She didn’t need acute observational skills to understand how he worked, what kind of clock he had inside him.

“You’re one of the few who ever bothered.”

Zelda blinked, pulled from her thoughts. “Bothered to what?”

Link smiled at her, that warm, genuine, crooked smile that warmed her from the inside out. “Bothered to learn.”

The unexpectedness of his sincerity pulled at her, whispered to her. His eyes sparkled.

Then, a door slammed.

Not the barn door. The manor door, thrown shut hard enough to be heard even in the barn.

Link shot to his feet, so fast Zelda hardly saw him move at all. He stared intently at the barn door, watching. He cocked his head, and Zelda fancied she saw his ears twitch.

“Link?” Zelda whispered. “What is it?”

“Get out of sight of the door.”

“What?”

Sir Ganondorf’s voice drifted in like rolling thunder, and not the pleasant kind, rumbling through the front lawn. He was shouting for the “farm boy”, and suddenly that sick, heavy feeling came firing back into Zelda’s chest like an arrow, so abrupt she forgot to breathe for a second. She had nearly forgotten about him.

“Farm boy! Where are you? I have a question for you.”

Link stood beside her, tense, like a drawn bow. “He’s not going to touch you,” he said, and he said it like a promise.

Zelda nodded jerkily. She didn’t trust her voice, didn’t trust Sir Ganondorf’s hearing. The barn was an open layout, with large wooden troughs for food and water along the walls, so the cows could roam wherever they pleased. Zelda ducked beside one of the troughs, curling up into a little ball out of sight. She peeked over the edge of the trough to see Link stalking toward the barn door.

He checked to make sure Zelda was out of view before he opened the door, only enough to be able to step through it.

“Oh, there you are. Still as quiet as before, eh?” Zelda could hear Sir Ganondorf’s loud, booming voice clear as day, and it sent chills down her spine. That feeling twitched in her stomach, squeezing at her heart. She tried to remember to breathe.

“I’ve been searching for Miss Zelda all morning. She didn’t come to breakfast, and when I checked her rooms, she was nowhere to be found.” A pause . “I assume you know where she is.”

The turmoil inside her rolled like a tidal wave, crashing against the shores of her mind. When she closed her eyes she had visions of dark hallways, so she kept them open, counting pieces of hay. She waited for Link’s words but they never came, and she could imagine the cold, serious look on his face right now; the same look he had when he pulled her away last night. A look that melted away when it was just the two of them on the back porch, when he knelt before her and allowed her to cry into his shirt. When he allowed her to be human.

“I don’t know who you think you are, but let me remind you that you’re _hired help._ ” Sir Ganondorf’s voice, like ice in Zelda’s veins, got quieter, deeper, more threatening. But if Zelda knew Link at all, she knew he would not be fazed. “You feed the animals, and clean up their shit. You answer to your superiors and when they’re _busy,_ you do _not_ interrupt.”

Romani lowed softly. Zelda turned to watch her, ignoring the sting of tears.

“Miss Zelda is not yours,” Sir Ganondorf’s voice sneered. “She’s _mine._ Do you understand that?”

Silence, for a long while.

Link’s voice, deathly calm: “She’s not here. I suggest you look elsewhere.”

A scoff. “You’re hiding her somewhere. That’s fine. You’re not at subtle as you think you are, kid, but it won’t matter for much longer.”

Fabric rustled. Heavy boots thundered away, toward the manor. Romani headbutted Zelda softly, her auburn fur littering her dress.

Zelda’s lungs screamed and she took in a shaky breath, clutching at Romani’s neck as if it were her only anchor in an angry, unforgiving sea. Romani smelled like cow and hay and nothing else, nothing wicked. Just a sweet, baby cow.

Link waited before opening the barn door. Probably making sure _he_ had left completely. When he came back in he approached Zelda slowly, quietly, watching her face with every step he took. He didn’t ask her if she heard their conversation. He didn’t ask her if she felt okay. He could probably read her enough to know the answers.

He stood before her, brushing away his bangs, and his already soft voice was even softer as he asked his question.

“Do you want to help me with the chickens?”

Zelda looked up at him, her hair falling across her wet face. There was something in his open, concerned expression that she didn’t want to read into. Something dangerous and frightening and _warm._

“Okay.”

He smiled, that little smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“Do you want to hold the basket or get the eggs?” he asked.

Zelda turned the question over in her frayed mind, glad to be focusing on something else. Those chickens may be her mother’s, but they were still _scary_. She’s seen how they’ve chased after Link. “I can hold the basket.”

Link helped her to her feet, offering a steady hand that fell away once she stood, though she felt more unsteady than ever before. She gave Romani one last pat before following Link on bare, dirty feet, but hesitated at the barn door.

_What if he’s out there waiting for me?_

Link caught her hesitation. Of course he did. He touched the back of her elbow. “We can go through the back door.”

Zelda bit her lip. He was always protecting her, even from the beginning. She whispered her affirmation and he led her away, through the barn into the blazing sunlight, his touch gentle at her arm. It was late morning now and the sun had almost risen fully, and the smells of summer were fresh on the air. She ignored the way her legs shook when she stepped into the open and focused on the ground. The coop was only a few feet away, so _why was it so hard?_

All the same, they reached the chicken coop without incident. Link brought her in and shut the door behind her, getting to work immediately. The basket hung on a little hook next to the door, and Zelda got it down at Link’s request. The chickens protested quietly as he retrieved their eggs, and when he spoke to them his words were too quiet for Zelda to understand. She could only hear the soft tenor of his voice. When he dropped the eggs in the little wicker basket he smiled at her, and her tired, weary heart felt more confused than ever before.

Zelda tried to turn off her feelings as she looked around the chicken coop, counting each chicken and trying to remember their names. The coop felt cozy: it was a little building with a slanted roof and a wooden floor. During construction a little hole had been cut in the side that lead to a fenced-in portion of the yard so the chickens could roam: it was from there that Anju frequently escaped. The chickens clucked in their little cubbies that lined the far wall, and the smell of fresh hay and feathers surrounded Zelda at every angle. Link must’ve cleaned the coop earlier - she couldn’t recall the coop ever smelling particularly _clean_ when she visited as a child.

The next thought came quickly: she hadn’t been inside the chicken coop since her mother died.

Gods. She remembered her mother so well despite how long it had been since she died. Her death had left Zelda feeling numb and hollow, and that hole in her heart had never quite healed. Back then the manor seemed much larger than it actually was, though it still seems so big. She remembers, faintly, running through the halls at top speed, chasing her mother. Her mother ran as gracefully as she walked, and to Zelda’s young brain, it looked as if she floated instead of ran. She told her mother everything, back then. Even at such a young age she wanted to be a scientist, though she didn’t know the word for it then. She would catch frogs and dragonflies in Robbie’s garden and keep them in glass jars, studying them and drawing crude pictures to paste on her walls. Back then, her father wasn’t as harsh on her. He let her live her life and smile and laugh, and play in the backyard after it rained and stain her hems and nice white stockings with mud.

But then her mother died, and her father changed.

Anju, the little troublemaker, came clucking up to Zelda, the red tuft on her head bright as always. She had only been a chick herself when Zelda’s mother died. Zelda wondered if Anju remembered her.

She had the prettiest smile, Zelda’s mother, the kind that reached all the way to her eyes. _“Zelda, my love,”_ she used to say, “ _all will be well in the end. You can do anything_.”

Zelda blinked back tears. If she wanted anything at all, she wanted her mother back, right now. She didn’t know how to deal with this sick feeling in her stomach, or with her father. Every time he looked at her with that disappointed expression on his face, she felt like a failure and she didn’t even know why. She just wanted to make him happy and she knew the only way to do that would be to marry _him_ , but the very thought of it made her weak in the knees. But it was expected of her, and a proper woman did what she was told. When he inevitably proposed tonight, what choice would she have? What would she be brave enough to do?

“I don’t want to marry him,” she whispered.

Link looked over at her. Though her voice sounded so faint to her own ears, he had heard her. “Then don’t.”

“Father wants me to.”

“It is not your father’s life,” Link said simply.

Zelda pursed her lips.“I just…I feel like I should do everything I can to make him happy. He’s always so disappointed in me and I have this one, big chance to make him proud. I don’t have another choice.”

Link said nothing, but his expression read clear as day. That ugly feeling in Zelda’s stomach writhed.

“What else am I supposed to do, Link?” She could barely manage the words. “I’m not strong enough.”

“There are different kinds of strong,” Link replied, “and different kinds of weak.”

“What if all I am is weak?”

He looked at her. “You’re not.”

She couldn’t meet his gaze, choosing instead to focus on a brown feather wedged in a crack in the coop floor. “Father wants me to marry him, so I should. I’m not good at being a proper lady, and I know I’ll have no other chance at marriage in my life. Father practically said it himself. I’m lucky Sir Ganondorf is interested in me at all. I should’ve just _let him-_ “

“ _Zelda_.”

She flinched at the sudden firmness in Link’s voice, squeezing her eyes shut. Her lungs felt like they were collapsing.

“I’m just so…so _mad_ at myself,” Zelda whispered. She could barely force the words out. “I can’t d-do anything right and my father…my father’s going to…I’m supposed to be perfect. My mother…she was perfect, she truly was, but I’m nothing like her. I only look like her, but I’m not…”

 _I’m not her._ The unsaid words sat heavy in her mouth, on her tongue. It was a painful truth that Zelda had tried to swallow long ago: when her father looked at her, he saw his wife, but an imperfect, fractured version of her. A version that wanted to explore with no shoes on and loved frogs, and wanted to change the world for the better. Deep down, she knew her father loved her, but he didn’t understand her. He worried so much about appearances that he didn’t have _time_ to understand, and her imperfections became fatal flaws that threatened the family name.

Zelda knew that when Sir Ganondorf came along, expressing interest in his daughter, her father must’ve been so pleased. Finally, a way to fix everything. A way to fix _her -_ becoming a housewife would force her to be proper, wouldn’t it? She’d be so busy keeping a house that she wouldn’t have time for her delusions of science and adventure and research. A housewife was all she would ever be. Her breath caught in her throat and the chickens clucked around her, ignorant to the whirling emotions in her chest that raged like a endless storm.

Zelda could hear the soft shuffle of hay as Link shifted closer to her, the heat as his body drew nearer. His hands brushed hers as he gently pulled the basket out of her shaking grip, and when he brought his hands to her arms she started in surprise and opened her eyes. His calloused hands, worn from however many years of manual labor, felt warm and solid where they sat gently gripping her forearms, and his gaze was soft and sincere and _blue_. Tears burned at her eyes before she could stop them.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out.

 _“_ It’s okay,” he said quietly. His thumbs traced little circles into her inner arm.

“No, it’s not - I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to - I just…” Her thoughts were spinning a mile a minute in her head and she couldn’t keep them straight, and the words spilling out of her mouth were a jumbled mess of apologies and cut off sentences and gasping, shaking breaths and she _couldn’t stop._ She stepped back, out of his grasp, clutching at her arms where he had held her before. Her knees felt weak and they suddenly gave out; she fell to the coop floor and the chickens squawked in alarm at the sudden motion, feathers flying as they scattered into the yard.

“Zelda?”

She felt Link’s hand on her shoulder, light and comforting and _heavy and firm and his eyes blazed like fire in the shadows of the hall_ but no, they were in the chicken coop and it was just her and Link and _Ganondorf, and the air smelled of brandy and_ feathers and a basket of eggs in the hay. She blinked rapidly, her breath coming short and fast and it felt as if her lungs were about to explode with air but were empty all at the same time, and she scurried backwards on her hands and knees until her back hit the wall of the coop and suddenly Link’s presence following her felt suffocating.

“ _Don’t touch me!”_ she snapped, slapping Link’s hands away.

Zelda saw him step back with alarm and hurt in his eyes, and that hurt felt like an arrow to her gut. She wasn’t lashing out at _him_ , she didn’t mean it, but when she opened her mouth the words didn’t come, just a weak little sound. She hugged herself tight and tried to focus on Link’s boots through her blurry eyes, wishing the heavy feeling on her heart to go away.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I…”

She didn’t know what Link thought of her little spectacle. She barely knew what _she_ thought of it. She just knew she hurt him. Her head pounded with a thousand thoughts at once. She scrambled to her feet without even realizing it and was pushing out the door before she could stop herself, leaving Link behind in the coop with the chickens and she felt _guilty_ and _awful_ and she just wanted to curl up with Terrako and sleep.

_I don’t mean it._

By the time Zelda reached the manor porch her panic had faded, leaving behind a tired, fragile person she couldn’t recognize in the reflection on the doorknob. She opened the door with a shaking hand and stumbled into the entry hall, blinking her tears away.

Maybe Stamm had fruitcake in the kitchen. She took a step, then two, then three. That door sat there at the bottom of the stairs, and that wall before her.

“Zelda.”

She started. Her father stood behind her, arms crossed over his chest. The door to his study stood open beside him.

“Let’s have a talk in my study. There’s something we need to discuss.”

Fear spiked in her chest, not that her father noticed. He probably didn’t even know about last night, and Zelda wouldn’t be the one to tell him. She didn’t want to hear the accusatory things he had to say.

So Zelda trailed behind him, feeling like a dog about to be punished for disobedience, in a dress covered in hay and feathers and cow fur, on feet bare and dirty, more tired and confused than she’d ever been. She stared at her father’s straight back and imagined his disappointed thoughts, adding wood to the burning, painful fire in her mind, and the smoke caused her eyes to tear up all over again.

Gods, she never wanted to cry again for the rest of her life.

Her father’s broad form obscured the study, but she already knew he’d be there. Sure enough, as her father moved to sit behind the desk, she saw him. There, in the cushy leather armchair in front of the desk, sat Sir Ganondorf. He smiled that white, shiny smile at her, the same smile she had seen last night in the dark when his eyes burned like embers and his lips were hot on her cold, cold skin, and when he said hello his voice turned her blood to ice.

Zelda’s eyes met her father’s, and his gaze turned hard. Stern.

_If that man proposes to you, you’d best say the right thing._

She bit her lip and turned away, plastering a smile on her face for Sir Ganondorf, and her fabricated politeness felt like a mask that got easier and easier to put on, day after day. “Good evening, Sir Ganondorf. I trust your day has been pleasant?”

“It would’ve been more delightful had I seen you this morning,” Sir Ganondorf tilted his head, eyes glinting. “I looked everywhere for you but you simply couldn’t be found.”

Zelda scrambled for an excuse. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I…felt a little ill this morning, and I spent most my time in the kitchen. Helping to cook. It, uh, relaxes me.”

By the glowing look on Sir Ganondorf’s face, her words were a little too perfect. “You’d make an excellent wife with that kind of attitude.”

“Ah…thank you, Sir Ganondorf.”

“Of course. You look like you’ve been…busy.”

Zelda felt sick to the bottom of her stomach. If she had eaten anything at all earlier she would’ve thrown it up, right there. She had no words to say.

“Sir Ganondorf is leaving for his hometown tomorrow morning,” her father said, his words pointed. “It was certainly a pity you weren’t around today to make his last day special.”

“I’m sorry, I-”

“No apologies needed, Miss Zelda,” Sir Ganondorf interrupted. “It gave me the time to really think about some things.”

_No._

Her father smiled. “We’ve been discussing an important topic.”

Zelda blinked, her head moving on a swivel between the two men. Her mind latched on one fact: _Sir Ganondorf is leaving._

“Well, I hope you had delightful time here, Sir Ganondorf,” Zelda forced out. “I’m afraid I’m dreadfully tired from the day. It’s been rather long. Please excuse me, I would like to retire to my room.” It was sudden and impolite and unladylike; she wasn’t allowed to end a conversation like that, and her father’s sudden change in expression reminded her of that. But she found she didn’t care.

Zelda curtseyed, and made to leave, but Sir Ganondorf lunged to his feet, catching her by the arm. His grip was strong, his fingers digging into her skin. She turned back to him, her heart thundering in her chest. He had that same fire in his eyes.

“Miss Zelda Bosphoramus,” he said, his voice brimstone and brandy and she knew his next words before he even said them. She had known them for a long time, and she could see her father watching expectantly in her peripherals.

Sir Ganondorf leaned close to her. He didn’t drop on one knee, or procure a ring. He simply held her arm tight and spoke in the confident way of someone who knew what her answer would be.

“Marry me.”

Link’s words echoed in her head: _It is not your father’s life._

Zelda blinked. She looked down at Sir Ganondorf’s hand around her bicep. She looked up into his blazing, confident expression, and felt a moment of calm, like the eye of the storm.

_There are different kinds of strong._

After everything, the word felt easy to say. “No.”

Sir Ganondorf’s thick eyebrow twitched. His grip tightened, ever so slightly. After a beat, he laughed, forceful and loud. “You’re funny, Miss Zelda.”

“Yes,” her father chimed in, sounding nervous. “She has an excellent sense of humor, doesn’t she?”

“I said no. Let go of me.”

“It’s already arranged, love,” Sir Ganondorf said, dropping his voice. As if he was afraid of someone overhearing. “Your father said yes. It doesn’t matter what you say, but it’ll make it easier if you just agree.”

“It’s not your decision,” Zelda snapped. “I said _no._ Now, let go of me.”

Sir Ganondorf blinked slowly at her, like he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. His grip on her arm started to hurt.

“Of course it’s my decision,” he said simply, and Zelda couldn’t help it.

She slapped him.

Hard enough where her palm left a mark on Sir Ganondorf’s cheek, and the surprise of it caused him to let go. He touched his face, shock coloring his expression. Then, he looked down on her, his expression positively furious _,_ and any bravery Zelda may have had drained away. He loomed over her, filling her vision with his bulk.

“You _bitch_ ,” he hissed. He stepped back, away from her, giving her the space she needed to _breathe._

Sir Ganondorf glared at her father. “You forgot to mention your daughter’s lack of common sense,” he growled, before storming through the open door, nearly flattening an eavesdropping Impa.

“What did you just do,” her father spat.

“Father, I-“

“ _No,”_ he thundered. _“_ You will not speak. We’re going to fix this, right now, and _then_ you can come up with some silly little excuse as to why you just tried to ruin us.”

With a firm hand he grabbed Zelda’s other arm, and forced her through the study door, dragging her behind as he chased after Zelda’s jilted suitor.

Sir Ganondorf was thundering down the porch stairs as Zelda’s father yanked her outside. He hollering something at poor Robbie, who looked _very startled_ to be shouted at by a huge, burly, red-headed man. He glanced between Sir Ganondorf and Zelda’s father, then at Zelda, whose arm remained trapped in a vice grip. He blinked.

“What the _hell_ are you standing around for?” Sir Ganondorf bellowed. “I told you to fetch me a damn horse.”

“Y-yes sir!” Robbie yelped, and sprinted off to the stables.

Robbie ran past Link and Purah, who were standing by the barn. Link’s eyes were wide, Purah’s mouth agape.

“Sir Ganondorf, I’m sure we can talk some sense-“

“I wouldn’t want to marry a fucking _whore_ like your daughter anyway,” Sir Ganondorf snarled. “I’ve seen her with that farm boy. He acts like her own personal little servant. If you were a smart man you’d fire him before he gets her pregnant.”

Zelda stared wide-eyed at her father. He hadn’t let go of her arm, and his face was cast in shadow from the porch awning. Her head felt empty - she didn’t want to be here, she wanted to be somewhere else, in her bed, in the hayloft, anywhere but _here_ with Sir Ganondorf and her father fighting over her mistakes and imperfections.

Robbie trotted back with a horse in tow, and Sir Ganondorf tore the reigns from his hands. He hoisted himself onto the horse, who whinnied in quiet protest, and glared daggers at Zelda.

It was with a cold smile that he spoke next: “I hope you’re happy with _him._ ”

Then, he rammed his heels into the horse’s side, yanking on the reigns. The horse cried out and shot down the road, kicking up clouds of dust with every hoofbeat until Sir Ganondorf was a red-haired speck on the horizon, before he was gone entirely.

Silence fell over the manor as the dust settled.

Zelda’s father let go of her arm, but didn’t look at her. He turned, without saying a word, and went into the manor, slamming the door behind him.

And Zelda stood there. There was a red mark on both her arms from two different men. She stood, still as a statue, her mind still catching up.

_I slapped Sir Ganondorf._

Despite it, Zelda smiled, small and private. Her father was furious at her and she’d just been called a slurry of names, but she felt proud of herself, for one of the few times in her life. But the rest of the evening caught up with her, and her heart dropped into her stomach. Her knees gave out, not for the first time that day, and she tumbled to side, grabbing at the railing for support.

She felt his calloused hands on her face before she heard him, cupping her cheeks.

_These are Link’s hands._

“Zelda? Zelda, are you okay?”

She opened her eyes to look up at him, crouching before her. Purah stood right behind him, next to Robbie, glowering at the road.

“Gods,” Purah muttered. “What an asshole.”

Link started looking Zelda over, and his eyes fell on the red marks left behind on her biceps. “Did he do that to you?” His spoke low and careful, but Zelda could hear the barely restrained anger hidden in his voice.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. She covered his hands with her own. “It’s okay, Link. He’s gone.”

“He also called her a fucking whore, if you missed that part.”

“Purah!” Zelda exclaimed. “It’s really okay. I’m not hurt.”

“And a bitch, if I heard correctly.”

“ _Impa._ ” Zelda twisted, glaring at Impa, who had emerged from the manor, arms crossed over her chest.

At this, Link pulled away, his nostrils flaring, eyebrow twitching. His fists sat clenched at his sides.

“If he wasn’t already gone, I’d kill him,” Impa said darkly, kneeling beside Zelda. “He looked like he was going to hit you when you turned him down.”

Link stood, so suddenly that Zelda started in surprise. “Link..?”

He flexed his hands.

“Link, I promise I’m okay. I told him no. He’s gone.”

But Link didn’t seem to hear her, for the first time since she’d met him. He turned to Robbie, eyes flashing in the night. He spoke through clenched teeth. “Would you mind getting me a horse?”

“A _horse_?” Zelda repeated, as an intimidated Robbie scurried off. She scrambled to her feet, reaching for his arm. “Link, it’s _okay_. Don’t…don’t do whatever you’re going to do. Please.”

Link pursed his lips, avoiding her gaze. His arm flexed under her hold. When Robbie came back with a horse hastily outfitted with a saddle and bridle, Link finally turned to face her.

“I’m supposed to protect you,” he said, quietly enough that only Zelda heard. He took her hand from his arm and brought it to his mouth, brushing a soft kiss to her knuckles, nothing like the one Sir Ganondorf had given her.

Then he turned, pulling himself into the saddle, and spurred his horse. He took off down the dirt road, after Sir Ganondorf.

Zelda stood there, stunned, holding her own hand and watching his figure get smaller and smaller before vanishing completely. Impa came up behind her, squeezing her shoulder.

“Are you really okay?” she asked.

Zelda said nothing.

There had been a fire in Link’s eyes when he looked at her, like she had never seen before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is SLIGHTLY longer than usual! I'm really excited for the next chapter, so I condensed a lot into this one...be excited...
> 
> (chapter title from Ulysses)
> 
> As always, I appreciate you all SO much. Thank you for every single comment, I read all of them and cherish them <3\. If you liked this chapter feel free to leave a kudos and a comment, and reach out to me on twitter @_kbots !!


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